Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Some topics to be discussed this week include:

• Rewriting all Town of Vienna zoning ordinances.
• Increasing allowable lot coverage in residential areas in exchange for stormwater management.
• Rental electric scooter pilot program.
• Red light cameras and speed cameras in Vienna.
• Possible sale of 380 Maple West building rights to Sunrise Assisted Living.
• Extending the MAC moratorium to June 30, 2020.

For Town meetings and work sessions, audio recordings will be available the “archives” section of this web page:  https://www.viennava.gov/index.aspx?NID=567

In addition, for Town Council and Planning Commission meetings, the Town broadcasts meetings, the Town broadcasts those live on Cox channel 27, Verizon FIOS channel 38, and streaming at http://vienna-va.granicus.com/player/camera/3?publish_id=5

---

Monday, 10/28/2019, at 7:30 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a work session to discuss, among other things, the scope of a proposed (roughly) quarter-million-dollar contract for a consultant to help update the Town’s zoning ordinances.  Separately, they will discuss a proposal to allow 30% lot coverage in residential areas (up from the current 25%) if homeowners implement a stormwater management system.  

The relevant materials can be found here:

https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=718283&GUID=A00DD1B9-01A1-45EE-9437-BE5A6B2DE849&Options=info&Search=

---

Tuesday, 10/29/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Transportation Safety Commission will meet to discuss, among other things, a pilot program for rental electric scooters (and other “shared mobility devices”) in the Town of Vienna.  Separately, they will discuss red-light and speed cameras in Vienna. 

Prior to this, starting at 7 PM, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety advisory committees will meet, but no agenda is yet available for that meeting.

The .pdf agenda for the meeting (no materials are provided) can be found here:
https://www.viennava.gov/Archive.aspx?ADID=4387

---

Tuesday, 10/29/2019, at 7:30 PM in the Community Center, there will be a meeting to introduce (probably) Sunrise Assisted Living as the (possible) new owner of the 380 Maple Avenue (Maple and Wade Hampton) MAC development.

As far as I know, there has been no official public announcement of this by the Town of Vienna.  I believe that some individuals received an email.  Citizens are welcome to hear Sunrise’s plans and to ask questions or offer concerns.

---

Wednesday, 10/30/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on extending the MAC moratorium to June 30, 2020.  (The extension should not be controversial, but this public hearing is a legal requirement.)  Prior to this, starting at 7:00 PM, they will hold a work session for discussions with the Town Attorney.

This is a public hearing, so I believe citizens may speak for up to three minutes.

Public hearing materials are here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=673421&GUID=7151C270-9A02-4776-8671-ED1C81520C81&Options=info&Search=
Prior work session notice is here (read the .pdf agenda to see the content of the meeting).
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/DepartmentDetail.aspx?ID=35871&GUID=5F43A6E1-E522-486D-A271-B83ED29861B9

 

In the diagram of the front of the Chick-fil-A-car-wash above, with Maple Avenue at the top, the drive-through window for the Chick-fil-A exits at the right side of the building (nearest Nutley), where the blue rectangle is.

In the original design, drive-through users would have then driven down the front of the building to return to the access road that runs past McDonalds.   I.e., they would have taken a left, using the brick “plaza” as an extension of the drive-through-lane.  Functionally, that brick “plaza” was just a driveway connecting the drive-through exit to the access road.

The Town changed that, requiring that the drive-through lane exit right-turn-only, directly onto Maple.  In theory, then, you can’t get back to the access road, if you go through the Chick-fil-A drive-through.

I have now seen several people comment on how fundamentally goofy this traffic flow is.  Upon inspection, it’s unlike any other fast-food drive through that I’ve ever seen.  It’s practically designed to result in a traffic jam.

Let me walk you through it, and give you my best guess as to what’s actually going to happen. To cut to the chase, my guess is, people are going to drive across the brick plaza anyway.   It’s set up to allow it (physically), and it will be vastly easier.  And as a result, that brick “gathering space” will be nothing of the sort.  It’ll just be the exit of the drive-through lane.  Exactly as was envisioned in the original plans. Continue reading Post #431: Is the Chick-fil-A “gathering space” a sham?

Consider two small restaurants that are completely identical, except that one is fully enclosed, and one is open to the outdoors.  One has 10 tables, located in a little storefront along Maple Avenue.  The other has 10 tables under an awning, adjacent to the Maple Avenue sidewalk.  They serve identical menus, charge identical prices, and do an identical amount of business.  And for either one, you can’t use the tables unless you buy something to eat.

Separately, one restaurant is part of a building that sits on a 2.99 acre parcel of land.  The other restaurant is part of a building that sits on a 3.00 acre parcel of land.

Clear?  Nearly identical restaurants on nearly identical parcels of land.

And now, two questions, with answers provided below.

Question 1:  Which of the following statements is true, regarding proposed Maple Avenue zoning:

A:  The Town offers a bonus for the indoor restaurant seating.

B:  The Town offers a bonus for the outdoor restaurant seating.

C:  The Town is neutral about the choice of indoor or outdoor seating.

Question 2:  Which is true, regarding the two parcels of land that these restaurants sit on, under the proposed MAC zoning revisions. 

A:  The Town requires twice as much open space on the 2.99 acre parcel.

B:  The Town requires twice as much open space on the 3.00 acre parcel.

A:  The Town treats the two parcels more-or-less the same.

---

To the best of my understanding, the correct answers are B and B.

For question 1:  Builders have to reserve some minimum amount of “gathering space” on property redeveloped under MAC zoning.  The new “gathering space” requirement replaces the existing “open space” requirement.  If they don’t provide enough “gathering space”, they can’t redevelop the lot under MAC.

The 10 outdoor restaurant tables, accessible from the sidewalk, appear to count as “gathering space”, while the indoor tables definitely do not.  That makes the 10 outdoor tables much more valuable to the builder.  The indoor tables are simply commercial space.  The outdoor tables are not only commercial space, but in addition help satisfy the “gathering space” requirement.

For question 2:  The proposed law literally has a sharp cutoff at exactly 3 acres.    The Town doubles the “gathering space” requirement if the lot is 3 acres or more.  The 2.99 acre lot is required to reserve 10% of the (buildable area of the) lot as “gathering space”.  The 3.00 acre lot is required to reserve 20% of the lot as “gathering space”.

Aside:  The proposed law is actually substantially worse than that.  Not only does it require 10% more “gathering space”, but developers can sidestep that if they provide “cottage housing”.  Any cottage housing, as the draft currently reads.

Commentary:    The “open space” requirement was arguably the single most screwed-up part of the MAC statute.  You can read an old writeup of it here.

Here’s the problem:  It’s not getting any better.   It’s different under the proposed MAC.  It’s now “gathering space” instead of “open space”.  But in terms of double-counting spaces, allowing little dribs and drabs of space to count, and so on, it’s more-or-less no better than it was.  One truly goofy part of the prior law was eliminated, in that courtyards that are completely internal to a building, and only accessible to building residents, will not count as “gathering space” (but did count as “open space”).  But otherwise, pretty much all the things that made the prior requirement worthless still remain.

And now we are weaponizing it with some fairly significant financial incentives.  Build a restaurant with three sides, that counts.  Add that fourth wall, so that the same space can be used in winter, and it doesn’t count.  Cross that 3.0 acre line, and you are slapped with a big penalty.  But build some cottage housing, and you dodge the penalty.

And so, as the Town now changes this requirement, and uses it to create new and untested financial incentives, I think maybe it needs to step back and ask “what, exactly, are we likely to get with this “gathering space” requirement?”.

First, to be clear, you aren’t getting public parks.  This “gathering space” is private property.  It’s not a park, in the sense of Town-owned land open to the public.  It might be a space where you could (e.g.) stroll up and sit on a bench.  It might be a space where you’d feel like you were intruding on private property if you did that.  And it might be a strictly pay-for-play space, such as an outdoor restaurant.   And it might be nothing more than a broad sidewalk.

Second, we should have enough sense to do a little arithmetic, to get some idea of what we’d be getting under the proposed law.  Are we getting anything more than a broad sidewalk as mandatory “gathering space”?

In some cases, the answer is easily shown to be no.  For example, if the Wawa parcel were redeveloped under MAC, the existing, legally-required setbacks from the roadways would far more than satisfy the “gathering space” requirement.

The Town is proposing to have a 28′ setback from the Maple Avenue curb, and a 20′ setback from any other major street.  That’s already required.  In both cases, maybe 12′ of that will be literally in the Town’s right-of-way, and so is not private property that counts as “gathering space”.  The new Wawa sits on a lot that’s about 37,000 square feet.  If that were redeveloped under Maple, something under 3700 square feet would have to be gathering space.  (Under, because only the “buildable area” counts, that is, area of the lot excluding the mandatory setbacks and such.)  The portion of the Maple Avenue setback that is private property is about (170′ long x 16′ deep =) 2720 square feet.  The portion of the Nutley Street setback that is private property is (330′ long x 8′ deep =) 2640 square feet.  Together, that’s 5360 square feet.  The setbacks alone vastly exceed the required amount of “gathering space”.

Is this what the Town meant when it asked for “parks and plazas” along Maple, as part of MAC zoning?  A broader sidewalk?  How did we get from that simple desire, to this outcome?

I attended last night’s Town Council work session on revising the commercial zoning codes along Maple.  You may download my audio recording at this Google Drive link, and my Excel workbook “index” file (as to what was said, when) at this Google Drive link.  The Town will probably post its own (and much better) audio recording in the “archives” section of this Town web page.  They started their recording at a different time from when I started mine, so the times in my “index” file will be close to, but not exactly right, for the Town’s recording.

I’m going to think about this another day before I post any analysis of what went on.  I’m just going to offer a broad outline here.

Town Council members were given a list of six broad topic areas that need to be addressed for any rewrite of MAC.  That was given to them, on a white board, by Town staff, and was in theory a summary of the seven lists that Town Council members had provided (available here).  That list of six broad topic areas is equivalent to the first column in my summary of Town Council’s comments, found in Post #427.  I had a slightly different list, and I annotated who said what.

After a lot of discussion, it turned out that the core task for the evening was to come up with questions to be used in surveying Vienna citizens to see what they want on Maple Avenue.  But, at the end of the more than 2.5 hour meeting, that task of drafting survey questions was turned over to the Department of Planning and Zoning.  Which, as I have said as emphatically as I can say, is, in my opinion, a classic blunder (Post #415).  That’s also what prompted my just-prior post.

In the course of that, Councilman Potter repeatedly pointed out that we already have considerable information about what people want, from various prior surveys.  It’s mostly a question of using it.   And there seemed to be general agreement on Town Council that the Town Council itself did not want any more buildings like 444 Maple West.   But the idea here appears to be to survey Town of Vienna citizens on the fine details of things like allowable building heights.

I found that Councilwoman Colbert made the single most cogent point of the entire evening.  And was … not quite ignored, really, but nobody quite knew what to do about it.  Her point is that you need to show people realistic choices, in the sense that you can’t promise small buildings and lots of benefits for the Town.  There simply would not be the economic surplus/profit from small buildings to allow the Town to ask for much in the way of proffers from builders.  Her point is that you need to know what’s economically feasible, as a whole, before having a survey.  She suggested getting some builders to provide cost estimates of what would and wouldn’t be profitable on Maple.

But beyond that lack of any idea whatsoever of the underlying economics of what the Town is doing, asking separate survey questions on different aspects of MAC completely guts the point she was trying to make.  If you want to see why, look at the two two questions on burying the power lines in my brief parody survey, Post #428.  As it turns out, the Town had already asked about burying the power lines, in its own survey, and found that Town residents overwhelmingly favored burying the power lines.  Something line 91% agreed that would be a good thing to do.  But the question they asked was like my first power line question.  In effect, if it were costless to bury the power lines, would you do that?  Unsurprisingly, many said yes.  The Town did not ask my second, far more economically realistic question, which included the cost of doing so.

But the Town has a long-standing history of asking mom-and-apple pie questions, when soliciting citizen opinion about Maple Avenue.  And the answers to those questions, asked that way, are more or less meaningless.  And damned if it doesn’t look like the Town is going to do that yet again.

Separately, just for the record, Councilman Noble again came out strongly in favor of a random-sample survey.  I could not possibly agree with him more on this point.  In fact, he asked for a stratified random sample — one that attempted to get a survey sample that was a match for the demographic mis of the Town’s residents.  (And, I infer, would have used the response rate from the Town’s prior survey, by age category, to set up different sampling rates by age, so as to get responses that reflected the actual cross-section of Vienna residents.)  I’m just making the point that one Town Council member was absolutely clear that this should be a requirement for the survey.  What I did not hear was any general agreement, and in particular, I did not hear the Mayor second that idea.  So we’ll see what the Town actually gets.

I only have one more thing to note here, which is that Maple Avenue traffic was a major topic in my summary of Town Council comments.  But that somehow didn’t make the cut when Town Staff put together a list.  And the first (and only) brief mention of traffic, in the entire 2.5 hour meeting, occurred at 2:15.  (That’s the image at the top of the page — that’s a snapshot of my Excel “index” file for the meeting.)  It was mentioned, once, incidental to a discussion about parking.  Make of that what you will.

Oh, and the third map was still missing.  And yet, still very much talked about, in some form or another, by both Councilman Noble and Councilman Majdi.  If I have to draw it, it has no standing.  Town staff have to draw that third map, the one that shows the potential downtown “core” area.  Coucilman Noble described it (Lawyer’s to Park, Maple and Church), but there needs to be a picture and it needs to be given some official status.

 

Note:  This is not an actual survey.  I’m not collecting answers to these questions.

Question 1:

 

Above you see the Chick-fil-A-car-wash.  It’s a reasonable proxy for what MAC zoning will bring to Vienna.  The building itself stands 43′ tall; the tallest tower is 62′ tall.

The front of the building sits 24′ to 30′ off Maple Avenue.  That “setback” provides a private-property gathering space where Vienna citizens can socialize, as long as they buy something from the Chick-fil-A.

The Town of Vienna is considering allowing developers to place buildings like this all along Maple.  Most will have housing on the upper floors instead of a car wash, typically condos or apartments.

Citizens of Vienna will get a series of these private-property gathering spaces adjacent to Maple Avenue, similar to the front of the Chick-fil-a-car-wash, along with new mixed-use (retail and housing) buildings.

The initial wave of construction (approximately a dozen new buildings) will result in a one-third increase in the number of cars on Maple Avenue during rush hour.

Question:  Should the Town of Vienna proceed with this plan?

Yes

No

---

Question 2:

Would you like to see the above-ground power lines along Maple removed (i.e., buried underground)?

Yes

No

---

Question 3:

The Town of Vienna is considering whether or not to remove the above-ground power lines along Maple.  This will cost the Town approximately $20 million.  Only the lines running along Maple will be removed, not the power lines that cross over Maple (as illustrated above).  Power lines will not be removed on any of the other streets in Vienna.

Should the Town proceed with its plan to remove (i.e., bury) the above-ground power lines along Maple?

Yes, please spend $20 million to remove some of the power lines on Maple.

No, please find a better use for that money or don’t spent it at all.

---

Question 4:

The Town of Vienna is going to survey its citizens regarding MAC zoning.  Should the Town use actual pictures of actual MAC buildings, or should they use pretty pictures of far nicer streets, as shown above.  That is, should the Town use pictures of streetscapes that are far nicer than Maple Avenue could possibly be,  in order to gather opinions about what to do with Maple Avenue?

Choose one:

Show me reality (actual Maple Avenue)

Show me fantasy (locations that are much nicer and more spacious than Maple Avenue)

---

Question 5:  Bonus question.

If you laid $20 million worth of $100 bills end to end, in a straight line, starting at Maple and Center, how far could you get?

Gainesville, VA

Germantown, MD

Dale City, VA

Andrews AFB, MD

Any of the above

 

CORRECTION:  Tonight’s Town Council work session is in the Community Center, not in Town Hall as I stated previously

At the Town Council work session tonight (7:30 PM 10/22/2019), there will be further discussion of changes to our commercial zoning regulations, including MAC zoning.  For this discussion, each Town Council member wrote up (what was supposed to be) a list of the major issues they’d like to see discussed.  You can find those at this web page.  The current game plan then calls for proceeding in three steps:  Hashing out the the overall big picture first, polling the citizens of Vienna second (and perhaps adjusting the big picture as necessary), and then rewriting the statute third.

Continue reading Post #427: Tonight’s Town Council work session.

Marco Polo/Vienna Market townhouses

Front:

Back:

---

It was an odd night.  That’s the only way I can describe it.

The MAC issue in question was a petition, by a citizen, to have the Town Council overturn the Board of Architectural Review’s final approval of the Marco Polo/Vienna Market development.  The particular point was the plain-looking backs of the Townhouses, clad in siding instead of brick, as the townhouse fronts were.  This disparity between the ornate brick front and somewhat plain siding back was was arguably inconsistent with Town of Vienna code.  For Maple and MAC projects, the zoning code calls for all sides of the building that are visible to the public to be consistent in look and materials used.

In the end, it looks like there was an agreement to add a small amount of brick to the otherwise-all-siding backs of the townhouses.  Basically, the pillars between the garage doors will be brick, and I guess there will be a line of brick over the garage doors.  But the issue will have to come back before the Town Council for final approval at the next meeting.

How they got to that decision, and two-and-a-half hours it took to get there, that was the odd part.

Continue reading Post #426: Town Council meeting 10/21/2019

         

This will be my final post, for now, on the Chick-fil-A-car-wash.

Recap:  The big surprise with the Chick-fil-A-car-wash is that the large transformers for the underground utilities sit in front of the building, adjacent to the exit for the drive-through, nine feet from the curb, directly next to the sidewalk.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that this is an oversight.  In other words, it’s not that key Town officials and staff were aware of and actively approved this.  It’s far more likely that it just slipped through the cracks, and got lost amid all the other details that had to be checked as part of the zoning and permitting processed.  If they’d noticed it, they’d have had them put the transformers in an underground vault.  Nobody intended to have this spoil the “MAC streetscape” at this location.

Some may care about the aesthetics of it, but I don’t.  I look at this for what it is.  It’s a grotesquely oversized fast-food joint on an urban arterial highway.  It’s across the street from a gas station and a 7-11, which, in case you’ve never noticed, has a dumpster right next next to the sidewalk.  In that setting, a couple of electrical boxes out front is not hugely out-of-place.  (Shoot, in that setting, electrical boxes practically count as decoration).  I realize the Town has higher aspirations, but it’s not as if these unexpected electrical boxes/transformers are some huge eyesore relative to what’s across the street.

In a nutshell, in terms of aesthetics, I’d say that this Chick-fil-A-car-wash achieves something I would have thought impossible:  It makes McDonald’s look great.  Side-by-side, next to the Chick-fil-A-car-wash, McDonald’s comes across as petite, unobtrusive and downright stylish.

Instead, I’m just concerned about the bike/pedestrian safety issue that the Town’s oversight has created.  As I believe I have shown in the just-prior post, this is now the worst driveway in town for pedestrian visibility, beating out the driveway next to the Vienna Mattress Firm (aka the former Sleepy’s).

 

  

The new driveway at the Chick-fil-A is a worse than the Vienna Mattress Firm/Sleepy’s exit for several reasons.

1. The sight lines between driver and obscured sidewalk are shorter at the Chick-fil-A than they are at the intersection above (Post #423).  A car driver who stops just short of the sidewalk will have less than one second to see and stop for an oncoming sidewalk bicyclist.
2. At the Mattress Firm (Sleepy’s) intersection above, drivers are actually looking at the obscured part of the sidewalk when they look at oncoming cars on Maple.  .  At the Chick-fil-A, by contrast, drivers will be looking away from the obscured part of the sidewalk when they look at oncoming cars on Maple.
3. The Chick-fil-A exit will predictably be busy.  At times (such as when traffic backs up past the driveway), we should expect there to be multiple cars waiting to exit.
4. Drivers will  predictably be distracted as they exit the fast-food drive-through, e.g., putting their change away, distributing food to their kids, eating, and so on.
5. Drivers will be predictably unfamiliar with this unique situation.    This fast-food restaurant is likely to attract customers from a wide catchment area.  And this drive-through exit, with it’s obscured sight lines, is unlike more or less anything else in NoVA.  No reasonable person would expect a brand-new building to have such an unsafely obscured sidewalk at the fast-food exit.
6. The new HAWK light makes this a route that can be (and is) used by Madison High School students.  (Note that Chick-fil-A serves breakfast, so it will be open as they walk to and from school.)

Since the Town played a part in creating this new (potential) hazard, my feeling is that, if the Town’s experts see this as the hazard that I believe it is, the Town should do what it can, before the Chick-fil-A opens, to mitigate it.

First, I don’t think it’s feasible to get those transformers moved.  Legally, I’m pretty sure the Town can’t require it.  And I’m also sure it would be hugely expensive to do that, at this point.  I think they are there to stay.

Second, the Town could put in signs and a convex mirror to make drivers and pedestrians/bikers aware of the hazard.  Seems like that’s a fairly minimal ask.  But, if  done properly, would make that intersection even less appealing.  Why?  Ideally, the convex mirror showing the view of the sidewalk would be in the driver’s field of vision as they look at oncoming traffic, i.e., it would have to be placed at the curb, to the right of the driveway (as viewed when facing the building). So you’d be adding a large stand-alone mirror, on a pole, in front of the building.

Third, given that this the 21st century, the Town could use a more active technology, such as putting in a pedestrian sensor and warning light.  The light would come on when pedestrians or bicyclists were approaching from the blind side of that driveway.  Obviously that’s a more expensive and extensive undertaking.

Finally, the Town could go back and correct the original sin here.  My understanding is that, originally, Chick-fil-A wanted the drive-through lane to exit across the front of the building, back to the access road that runs in front of McDonald’s.  Basically, to let drive-through customers leave that property the way every other customer does.  But the Town wanted/needed to claim the brick “plaza” in front of the building as open/gathering space.  Roadways can’t count as open space.  Hence the separate exit for the drive-through lane, and a pedestrian “plaza” in front.

I’ll note a couple of things.  First, I don’t think people are going to use that “plaza” because it’s too close to the 123 traffic to be pleasant.  So IMHO it’s there purely for looks.  And it’ll look the same whether people drive over it or not.  Second, the developers went ahead and put in protective bollards in front of the store front, as if to protect pedestrians from cars driving on that front “plaza”.  So it’s already set up to be a driveway.

In theory, then, the Town could tell Chick-fil-A that it could go back to its original plan, if it wanted to.  That would solve this issue for good, with some additional construction costs.  They’d close the separate drive-through exit where the transformers are, brick over that portion of the drive-through driveway, and have cars exit by crossing the front of the building, driving over what is now the brick “plaza”.

Anyway, at this point, I’m done.  I have no skin in the game.  I’m not going to shop there, my kids have graduated from Madison, and I have no reason to use that sidewalk.  I’m not a pedestrian safety expert, so it’s possible that I have made a mountain out of a molehill.  But I do bike and walk Maple all the time, and, in my considered opinion, this drive-through exit will take the prize as the worst entrance onto Maple.  At the minimum, I think it’s well worth having the Town have its own experts assess the situation, and, if the experts agree that this is a problem, do what they can to address the situation before Chick-fil-A opens.

I think this is now the single most visually-obstructed entrance onto Maple Avenue, by a slight margin.  I’ll present details on that below.  All things considered, I think the Town ought to consider adding a few safety measures proactively.  Detail follows.

Note:  My original posting exaggerated the difference between the Chick-fil-A exit and another visually obstructed entrance on Maple.  This post is more nearly correct, based on more careful measurement.

Continue reading Post #423: Town of Vienna, please add some pedestrian safety measures here (revised).