Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #285: A break from MAC to talk about something even more depressing

I finally have a week without a MAC-oriented public meeting, and I’m going to take this opportunity to lay out my plan for stopping and reversing global warming, within our children’s lifetimes.

Sufficient warning

If you don’t believe that global warming is real, just don’t bother to read this one.  If you have some sort of happy fantasy that global warming will be good for the U.S.A., again, just move along.  And if you think this can be easily addressed with anything short of drastic measures, likewise.

Also, I’m going to do this one without citation as to source of information.  If there’s sufficient interest I’ll go back and document everything I say in this posting. Continue reading Post #285: A break from MAC to talk about something even more depressing

Post #284: CORRECTED: They’re going to do what at Nutley and 66?

In my original posting, I downloaded the draft plans on the Commonwealth of Virginia website explaining the proposed changes to I-66.  A colleague pointed out that these plans are obsolete.  Virginia Department of Transportation substantially altered the plan for the I-66/Nutley interchange, they just they just didn’t replace them on their website.  The corrected plans can be seen in this newspaper article, and a copy in full detail is on the Town of Vienna website (.pdf).  I have yet to determine where they can be found on the VDOT site.

I am going to walk through the new plans in the same orientation as I did in my  original posting.  To get oriented:  I-66 runs top to bottom, DC would be at the bottom.  Nutley runs left to right — Pan Am Shopping center is to the left, Vienna is to the right.

 

Under the new plan, the exits from Nutley to I-66 will be more-or-less as they are now.  But the exits from I-66 to Nutley will be quite different.  There will be a single exit ramp from each side of I-66 to serve both Nutley northbound and southbound.  The ramps will split — one side will feed directly onto Nutley in one direction, and the the other will terminate in a partial roundabout that will allow you to (in effect) to make the left turn onto Nutley in the other direction.  In addition, the westbound I-66 Lexus lanes will have an exit onto Nutley.  Again, using the partial roundabout, you can access Nutley north-bound or south-bound.

The proposed plan makes a hash of the existing pedestrian paths through the interchange.  Right now, there are sidewalks on either side of the road, you can walk from Vienna to Pan Am on either side, and on either side, you have to cross a total of four single-lane entrance and exit ramps.

Under the new plan, if you opt for the sidewalk (dark green) you must start on the east side of Nutley in Vienna, end up on the west side of Nutley at Pan Am, and cross the full width of Nutley (without a light!) at the left-hand roundabout in the picture above.  This is in addition to crossing four entrance/exit ramps.

Alternatively, there is a multi-use path (orange) that appears designed for bicycles.  If you take that option, you avoid the at-grade crossings of the road entirely, but take a much longer path and end up on the east side of Nutley at Pan Am.  By my measurement, the distance from Marshall Road to Lee Highway is currently about 4000 feet by sidewalk.  It will be over 6000 feet with the new multi-use path.  Trivial for a bicyclist, but burdensome for a pedestrian.  That said, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone walking that route.  If there are any pedestrians crossing that bridge, they are few and far between now.

They will also take out the collector-distributor lanes at this interchange. Presumably they needed the room; plausibly I-66 will now fill the entire available area under that bridge, so the “through” part of the collector-distributor lane was no longer feasible.  At any rate, instead of passing under Nutley to access one of the directions on Nutley from I-66, the exit ramp splits and leads directly to each direction.  That’s now feasible because the partial roundabouts allow you to, in effect, make a left turn across Nutley, if need be.

 

Post #283: BAR work session 5/24/2019, Vienna Market/Marco Polo

The Board of Architectural Review (BAR) held a work session this morning with the architect and developers for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market site.  The upshot is that the BAR looked at some changes in the proposed plans and said, in effect, that’s a good start.  They asked the architect to bring back a new plan that fully equaled the originally-submitted plans in terms of articulation, texture, and richness of design. Continue reading Post #283: BAR work session 5/24/2019, Vienna Market/Marco Polo

Post #282, Planning Commission final meeting on Sunrise assisted living

The Town of Vienna Planning Commission approved revised plans for a Sunrise assisted living facility at Maple and Center Streets.  The revised plans were the same as those that were introduced part-way through the last Board of Zoning Appeals meeting, and included:

  • the near-elimination of the retail space.
  • elimination of the mezzanine floor (i.e., the 5th floor)
  • reducing the 8′ fence behind the building to a standard 6′ fence.

I have placed my audio recording (.mp3) and “index file” to that recording (.xls) in this Google Drive directory.  Download both files (“2019-05-22 Planning Commission …) if you want to find and listen to specific parts of the discussion.

To see the updated plans, go to this webpage, and click for this .pdf document.  Floor plans and pictures start on page 12, the pretty pictures are on pages 19 and 20.

Those are the facts.  The rest of this is my highlighting of a few issues, and my speculation on what the Town Council ought to do (add public parking!). Continue reading Post #282, Planning Commission final meeting on Sunrise assisted living

Post #238, Revised: Wade Hampton Parking

In my initial write up of this, I swapped Park Street and Center Street while looking at Google Maple satellite view.  This post corrects that, but also corrects my statement that Center Street south of Maple is 32′ wide.  It is 32′ wide well away from Maple, but widens as it approaches Maple.   At Maple, it is substantially wider than the 32′ proposed for Wade Hampton Drive.

A corrected and revised posting follows.

My earlier contention (Post #232) is that 11 people can park legally on Wade Hampton now, and that, looking at the diagram of the future Wade Hampton, with the majority of it striped to accommodate three lanes at the end, almost all of that parking would be eliminated.

The Town, as reported by the developer, says otherwise.  In particular, the report was that no parking would be eliminated on the side of the street across from 380 Maple West.

What’s the correct explanation?  Somebody has to be wrong here.  At this point, the easiest way to resolve those two views is to suggest that the diagram of the street, as offered by the builder, is incorrect.  As long as you take away almost all the lane striping that is shown, and make the street more of a free-for-all, then you can plausibly claim more-or-less no loss of parking on the west side of Wade Hampton.

To be clear, you have to assume that the lane striping on the 32′-wide Wade Hampton will be nothing like the striping on the 32′-wide Park Center Street, as it meets Maple. Even though the setup (one lane incoming, two lanes outgoing) and width (32′) are the same.  And even though the striping on Park Center Street is almost identical to the builder’s diagram.  But if the Town stripes Wade Hampton as it did Park Center, all streetside parking would be eliminated.

So, I could be dead wrong.  But I had some help getting there.  To get to the Town’s reported position: you have to ignore the Builder’s drawing of Wade Hampton, you have to ignore the real-world example of Park Center Street at Maple, and you have to ignore one legal space on Wade Hampton that nobody uses anyway.  And if you do that, and leave most of Wade Hampton as a free-for-all, so that we can drive down the middle of the road as we see fit — then you can see that the Town’s reported claim of no parking loss is credible.

Detail follows:

Continue reading Post #238, Revised: Wade Hampton Parking

Post #281: Campaign finances and the Providence District Democratic primary candidates

As I discussed in this post, the W&OD railroad made Maple Avenue the choke point for a lot of Tyson’s traffic.  The black line below shows the nearly 5 mile stretch where the only road of any consequence that crosses the old W&OD roadbed is Maple Avenue.  This acts like a fence between Tyson’s and areas to the west.   If you live west of Vienna, and want to get to Tyson’s without using I-66, chances are that you will take Route 123 through Vienna.

What happens in Tyson’s doesn’t stay in Tyson’s — it drives through Vienna first.  Tyson’s is in the Providence District.  And so, while we can’t vote for Board of Supervisor candidates in that District, we have more than a spectator’s interest in that race.

In this post, I’m going to take a look at the campaign finances of the Board of Supervisors candidates from the Providence District.  Refer back to my just-prior post to see a similar analysis for our own Hunter Mill District candidates.  The data shown below are all taken from the Virginia Public Access Project, and are based on reports that candidate PACs must file with the Commonwealth under the CFDA.  Everything I summarize below, you can see by clicking the link above and then clicking the links on that page.  All figures are as of the last reporting data required by the Virginia Campaign Finance Disclosure Act (CDFA), March 31 2019.  Continue reading Post #281: Campaign finances and the Providence District Democratic primary candidates

Post #280: Campaign finances and the Hunter Mill candidates

In Post #272 I described the Virginia Campaign Finance Disclosure Act (CFDA).  In that posting, I noted that no campaign finance laws apply to elections in the Town of Vienna.  But this posting isn’t about Vienna.  In this posting, I’m going to show you what the CFDA can do for you, in terms of making you an informed citizen with respect to Fairfax County elections.

Disclosure:  I contributed to the campaign of Parker Messick.  You can see my posting about my talk with Candidate Messick on this page.

Continue reading Post #280: Campaign finances and the Hunter Mill candidates

Post #279: Beds/acre for Sunrise in Northern Virginia

The Sunrise Assisted Living facility proposed for Maple and Center streets seems to me to be a very space-constrained building. They have managed to create plans for a 100-bed facility on this site, but with little space to spare.

For example, many comments in public meetings have pointed out that the proposed level of parking appears inadequate.  Further, Sunrise had to include a partial (mezzanine) 5th floor in order to get a facility with 100 beds.  And they appear to have been unable to get both 100 beds and an all-retail first floor without including an illegally-large mezzanine 5th floor (a layout that was abandoned early on).

But is it true that this facility is a “tight fit” for this lot, or is it just my impression?  It’s not as if I’ve seen a lot of plans for assisted living facilities.  How can I tell, objectively, how this proposed building ranks in terms of being a “tight fit” on the lot?

In this post, I  compare the proposed Vienna facility to other Sunrise facilities in Northern Virginia in terms of beds per acre.  The upshot is that the proposed Vienna facility is quite an outlier  in terms of beds per acre.  Objectively, this does appear to be a “tight fit” for Sunrise in this location, based on my calculation of beds per acre.

Detail follows.

Continue reading Post #279: Beds/acre for Sunrise in Northern Virginia

Post #278: The former Sandy Spring Bank location

At the last Town Council public hearing on 380 Maple West (39 condos plus retail at Maple and Wade Hampton), one of the pro-MAC speakers brought up the empty space at the Leslie’s Pool building. It seems to have been vacant for an unusual length of time, and it abuts what appear to be a couple of thriving restaurants.  That’s a little economic puzzle, and I thought I’d try to figure that out.

The answer is that the space is occupied — by the ghost of the former tenant, Sandy Spring Bank.  Near as I can tell, a) Sandy Spring Bank continues to pay the rent on its lease, b) that bank is trying to sublet the space, but c) the lease specifies sub-standard parking for the Sandy Spring side of the building, and d) in all likelihood, Sandy Spring Bank has minimal flexibility in how they sublet the space.

In other words, the space is empty as a result of the ongoing aftermath of an unsuccessful business decision by Sandy Spring Bank.   The property owner is being paid and so probably doesn’t care that the space is empty.  And Sandy Spring Bank likely can do little to sublet the space, other than advertise it as it stands:  $60/sq ft/year in total costs, and just ten parking spaces.

To be clear, it’s not an indication of decay on Maple Avenue.  It’s an indication that, sometimes, business decisions go wrong.  And that if you have deep pockets, and you sign a commercial lease, one way or the other, you are stuck paying for that property for the duration of the lease.

Detail follows.

Continue reading Post #278: The former Sandy Spring Bank location

Post #277: Board of Supervisors Candidate Debate

Last night (5/15/2019), ViennaVotes sponsored an “informal debate” for the five Democratic candidates for Board of Supervisors for the Hunter Mill District.  The event was sparsely attended but the questions and answers — all focused on Vienna — were well worth the time.

Whether you have an interest in the lack of public baseball/softball fields in this area, or your Fairfax County property taxes, or Vienna schools, there was something said that may interest you.  If you want to hear what was said, you should take some time next week to visit the ViennaVotes website.  At that point a recording of the candidate debate should be posted.