In a nutshell: I’m not quite sure what went on with regard to the motion to rescind the approval of 380 Maple West (Post #309). About 40 minutes into the meeting, Town Council recessed into a closed session, in order to consult with the Town Attorney. That was supposed to last 10 to 15 minutes, but in fact took well over an hour. There was lengthy discussion of 380 after they came out of that closed session. I believe the upshot of all of that is that the motion to rescind the 380 Maple West approval was withdrawn — for now. Instead, they will hold a separate public hearing on July 15, to consider that motion to rescind, after publishing notification of their intent to rescind that rezoning.This will be a joint public hearing by Town Council and Planning Commission. The vote for another public hearing was 5-2, with DiRocco and Colbert voting against. Continue reading Post #315: The 7/1/2019 Town Council meeting
Author: chogan@directresearch.com
Post #314: Public meetings regarding MAC, week of 7/1/2019.
There is only one public meeting this week relevant to MAC zoning.
Today, 7/1/2019, at 8 PM, the Town Council will meet. The final item on this evening’s agenda is consideration of a motion to rescind approval of 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Maple and Wade Hampton).
The meeting materials for the motion to rescind the decision are posted here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3998325&GUID=6AFD6CFF-387C-4BF5-BB19-48AA30CEFC78&Options=&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/
You can see my writeup of this issue in Post #309.
Post 310: Why no plan?
This brief note is a return to comparing Maple Avenue to the Mosaic District. This post is one of those rare ones where I had a genuine “aha” moment. I finally got a little bit of clarity as to why MAC zoning seems so clueless to me. It’s a short post, read on to see if you agree, or click to get down to the “aha moment” to get the gist.
Post 312: Tooting my own horn
I recently received a comment about this website to the effect of “nobody knows who I am or what I have done”. And my immediate response was “that’s fine by me”.
I’m not here to toot my own horn. I scorn people who are full of themselves but short on substance. I loathe individuals who would use public forums to stroke their egos. And so I try to lean in the other direction when possible.
That said, my wife has convinced me that there may be value in explaining a) what I have accomplished so far, with this website, and b) why I am capable of doing the difficult technical analyses that you may see posted here.
This will be the one and only time I do this. And, in hindsight, I have fewer concrete accomplishments than I thought (or I have forgotten some), so this has been a good reality check for me. Click the links if you care to read the writeup.
1: Timely posting of recordings of Town of Vienna public meetings.
2: Solid garage walls for MAC projects adjacent to neighborhoods.
4: Parking for Sunrise (a near miss).
5: Increased public awareness of MAC zoning and its implications.
6: Countered disinformation with objective analysis.
Post #309: The July 1 2019 Town Council meeting
This is just a notice to bring something to your attention: The Town Council is going to consider a motion to rescind its recent approval of 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Wade Hampton and Maple). This will be the last agenda item at its 8 PM July 1 meeting.
You can find the relevant meeting materials on this web page.
I’m not going to opine on the legal issues behind this, but I will comment on the context arising from the recent Town of Vienna elections. Mainly, this is not unexpected.
In Fairfax County, they (typically) do not let the Board of Supervisors make land use decisions between the election and the seating of the new Board. In other words, they don’t allow lame-duck Board members to decide land use (zoning and rezoning) issues as they are going out of office.
They do this for several good reasons. Probably the most important is that you don’t want individuals who are not beholden to the electorate making these significant (and permanent) decisions about land use. In particular, you don’t want to allow them the opportunity to make one last grand gesture in favor of any one particular development or policy without having to face the consequences for such an action.
This May’s Town election replaced two pro-MAC Council members with two new anti-MAC newcomers. In round numbers, 75% of the votes cast in that election were for anti-MAC candidates.
And, unsurprisingly, given what appeared to be a fairly strong mandate from the voters, Councilman Springsteen asked the Town to abide by the same rule that Fairfax County does. He asked that land-use decisions be deferred until the new Town Council could be seated. He asked that the lame-duck Town Council not engage in that business.
He was ignored. At the last Town Council meeting, the Town Council a) approved 380 Maple West, b) turned down the Sunrise assisted living facility at and c) appointed and re-appointed various pro-MAC actors to Town Boards and Commissions (e.g., Planning Commission).
But, as it turns out, government bodies can change their minds. They can rescind something that they recently passed, according to Robert’s Rules of Order.
Somehow, given the hustle-up and hardball style that the pro-MAC forces have used to move these projects through the system, I doubt that they’ll allow this motion to rescind to be considered. From what I hear, the pro-MAC Councilmembers that remain are still in denial about the recent election. They continue to maintain that the “real” Vienna is solidly behind them. (Without evidence or analysis, but what else is new.) So it will take another election to settle that point one way or the other. In any case, there’s been zero indication of any willingness to accede gracefully to the apparent will of the people. All I can say is, what happens Monday night will be remembered, and I for one will try to make sure it is clearly remembered for the next Town of Vienna election.
Post #308: The tear-down boom (again), and the McLeanification of Vienna
The main point of this article is to show you a few graphics that I stumbled across. So let me get that out of the way up front. I’m not sure there’s a lot of point to this posting beyond that, other than quantifying what you already know: They sure are building a lot of big houses in Vienna. And, at the end, I suggest one possible change in zoning policy: Letting them cut those big houses in half — as duplexes — would provide a type of less-expensive family-oriented housing that is really getting scarce here in Vienna.
The data: Single family homes for sale
Per Redfin (with full attribution and acknowledgement of copyright), below is a map of single-family houses for sale in Vienna VA. I’ve followed that with equivalent maps for Oakton, Fairfax City, Falls Church, and McLean. These are followed by table showing relevant data for each location.
Take a minute to study the dollar values on the maps, or on the summary table following the maps. Scan for houses under $1M and under $500K. Do the dollar values for Vienna seem a bit “rich”, compared to your understanding of these communities?
Continue reading Post #308: The tear-down boom (again), and the McLeanification of Vienna
Post #307: Tomorrow morning’s BAR work session is cancelled
The Board of Architectural Review posted an agenda for their work session tomorrow, and it would indeed have focused on the Marco Polo development. That said, the Town website currently marks that meeting as being postponed to some later date.
Post #306, Where do we go from here, part 2: Falls Church
Falls Church was mentioned at one of the Town’s joint work sessions on changing MAC. The context was that Falls Church uses a completely different zoning mechanism for their mixed-use developments. So I thought it might be worthwhile to sketch out how Falls Church goes about it, and contrast that to the Town of Vienna MAC zoning.
I don’t claim to understand zoning in full detail. So, in the main, you’re getting an economist’s view of the different approaches taken by Vienna and Falls Church. And, to be clear, this isn’t an endorsement of what Falls Church is doing, it’s just a summary of a different approach used by a nearby City.
In a nutshell: Vienna tells developers exactly what they are allowed to do, in a set of explicit zoning rules. Falls Church, by contrast, tells developers what Falls Church wants to get out of redevelopment, in a free-form exception to the zoning rules. I believe that difference gives Falls Church a much better bargaining position vis-a-vis developers.
Continue reading Post #306, Where do we go from here, part 2: Falls Church
Post #304: Where do we go from here, part 1
At this point, we have four MAC buildings approved and a moratorium on new MAC rezoning applications until (I believe) November 15.
So, what do we do next? First, let’s recap recent events. Continue reading Post #304: Where do we go from here, part 1
Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance
I send out an email, once a week to inform people of MAC-related public meetings in the Town of Vienna. It’s not as easy as you might think, because the Town tends to be … sloppy … about keeping citizens informed. In this post, I’m going to walk through this week’s calendar and point out a few things.
First, a summary:
Number of public meetings: 4
Meetings with agenda posted: 1
Meetings with reliably-available recordings: 2
Continue reading Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance