Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #243: NARFE candidate forum, 4/16/2019

I attended an hour-long candidate forum this afternoon at the Vienna Community Center today.  This was sponsored by the Vienna/Oakton chapter of NARFE (rhymes with scarf), the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.  They normally meet the 2nd Tuesday of most months, 1 PM, Vienna Community Center.  And the first hour of this meeting was devoted to listening to the candidates for Vienna Town Council. Continue reading Post #243: NARFE candidate forum, 4/16/2019

Post #242: Chick-fil-A, you ain’t seeing nothing happening

My guess is that the pace of construction will pick up sometime around mid-May.

This is one of a series of posts that is usually titled “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”  (You can use the category search here to find them.)  Normally, the point is that, a) the building is still getting bigger, and b) even as big as it is, it’s tiny compared to 444 Maple West/Tequila Grande or to Vienna Market/Marco Polo.

But as I drove past that yesterday, thinking of the next installment in that series of posts, I noticed that … not much had changed since I last photographed it on 2/10/2019.  Even though there is more to be built, the structure isn’t markedly bigger than it was back then.  Things have just kind of … stopped.  As far as the size of the building goes. Continue reading Post #242: Chick-fil-A, you ain’t seeing nothing happening

Post #241: Wawa comes through.

I know what convenience store I’m going to use, henceforth, in the Town of Vienna.  I’m a Wawa convert. 

Read the back story in this post, and this one.

Briefly, thanks to an odd 1974 ruling by the Town of Vienna, there’s no masonry wall at the back of the Coldwell Banker property (corner of Maple and Nutley), where it adjoins the residential neighborhood.  This is now a problem for the family living behind that property, because the sleepy little Coldwell Banker training facility is going to be replaced by what may well be a very busy Wawa convenience store.

And, although they were under no legal obligation, Wawa has now proposed to put up a 6′ vinyl privacy fence, at the back of the lot.  Just to be a good neighbor.  And they’ll put it up in such as way as to spare the large silver maples currently on or near the lot line. Continue reading Post #241: Wawa comes through.

Post #240: Last day to register to vote

Today 4/15/2019 is the last day to register to vote for the May 7th Town of Vienna elections.  If you are not registered in Virginia, or may be registered at an address outside of the Town of Vienna, changing your registration is easy enough.  If you have a Virginia driver’s license, you can do that entirely on-line.  Without that, you’ll have to mail or hand-deliver a signed form.  You can see this post for more details.

You can find the full schedule on the Fairfax County website.  The ins-and-outs of absentee voting are show at this link on that Fairfax County website page.

•April 15: Voter Registration Deadline. In person: 5:00 pm, online: 11:59 pm
•April 30: Deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail, 5:00 pm
•May 4: Final day to vote absentee in person, 5:00 pm
•May 7: Deadline to return your ballot to the Office of Elections, 7:00 pm

Post #239: Advance announcement of traffic experiment – RESCINDED

The Town has made much about the benefits of closing curb cuts along Maple.  For example, under current MAC statute, closing off one Maple Avenue driveway satisfies the “column A” requirements for a 15 percent reduction in the parking requirement for the building.  (In what universe that makes sense, I don’t know, because closing a driveway seems to have nothing to do with the need for parking.  But that’s the law.) Continue reading Post #239: Advance announcement of traffic experiment – RESCINDED

Post #238: Wade Hampton Parking, revisited (error fixed 5/22/2019).

Corrected 5/22/2019 for my mixing up Park Street and Center Street in Google Maps satellite view.

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: Wade Hampton Parking, revisited (error fixed 5/22/2019).

Post #237 Replacement yard sign stakes

I have reports that the stakes holding up my green savemaple.org yard signs are breaking.  I would like to keep these signs up through the May 7 2019 Town election.

I have bought replacement stakes and have left them at the end of my driveway at 226 Glen Ave SW.  If the metal stake for your sign has broken, please drop off the broken one and pick up a new (but somewhat smaller) one from the end of my driveway. Continue reading Post #237 Replacement yard sign stakes

Post #236: The tear-down boom actually has zero impact, or, by-right jumps the shark

After sitting through Wednesday’s Planning Commission (PC) meeting I had a revelation.  I’ve been looking at the tear-down boom (Post #217) all wrong. Now that I have revised my thinking, and modeled it after the logic used by some members of the planning commission, I now realize that the tear-down boom has absolutely no impact on anything in the Town of Vienna.

Here’s the key:  Every owner of a small home in Vienna has the right to tear down their home and build a vastly larger home on the lot.  And so, because they have the right to do that, the only logical way to assess actual tear-downs is against this by-right baseline. This was the key bit of logic that had escaped me before.

And so, the following are inescapable conclusions of that logic:

  1. These new, much larger homes have zero impact on the schools.
  2. There is no impact on the Town of Vienna tax base.
  3. The tear-down boom leaves the look of our residential streets unchanged.
  4. Conversion of the entire housing stock to very large homes has no impact on the perception of Vienna as “small town”.

If you think this looks a bit off, I’ll just remind you of the logic used to get there.  The right way to assess a change that actually will occur (an actual tear-down), is against a baseline of what could possibly have been done, by right.  No matter how improbable.  And so, logically, because all homeowners have the right to tear down and rebuild, the actual tear-down boom has zero impact.

This is exactly the logic used by some, at Wednesday’s PC meeting, to justify, in part, the size of 380 Maple West.  This is the logic of the by-right analysis as it is currently being done. Continue reading Post #236: The tear-down boom actually has zero impact, or, by-right jumps the shark

Post #235: Please keep the sidewalks open

I got an email today from a reader asking about the sidewalks.  Specifically, is the Town going to keep the sidewalks open as developers build the three (four?  more?) MAC buildings on Maple?

Turns out, all I can say is, that’s a great question, I can’t even come close to an answer, and please start asking the Town about this. This has the sound of one of those decisions that might (e.g.) be made by Fairfax County months before we even know there’s a decision to be made.  It would be nice to think that the Town of Vienna was on the case and acting on our behalf.

Sidewalk closure on the west end of Maple will (e.g.) inconvenience students walking to Madison.  If 444 closes the sidewalks,  students walking to Madison from my neighborhood will first have to walk away from Madison (to Nutley/Courthouse or to Maple/Pleasant HAWK light), cross the road, and the continue to Madison.  Not the end of the world, but clearly a disincentive to walking.

Continue reading Post #235: Please keep the sidewalks open