If you want to know how the Mayor views your concerns about traffic, there’s no better place to start than to look at the Mayor’s own words, here: Continue reading The Mayor’s rhetoric on traffic, 9/5/2018
Author: chogan@directresearch.com
August 20 Town Council Meeting Review
STATUS OF VOTE ON 444 MAPLE WEST: UNKNOWN
The agenda and meeting materials are now available here, as of 11:30 AM 8/16/2018.
My initial take on this is that the Town is setting this up for approval. They are (e.g.) introducing materials never before presented, all of which support passing this proposal. For example, there’s a fiscal analysis, a re-analysis of the traffic situation and so on. Continue reading August 20 Town Council Meeting Review
The $16M police station renovation, 9/4/2018
The Town of Vienna has budgeted $16M to renovate and expand the police station. In fact, they are planning to raise the meals tax from 3% to 4% to cover (most of) the additional debt service cost that will entail. You can read the details in my posting about the Town capital budget, here. Continue reading The $16M police station renovation, 9/4/2018
First Tuesday in May, 8/22/2018
At the 8/20/2018 Town Council meeting a decision was made to suspend MAC for between 120 and 270 days. In fact, that announcement was how the meeting started. Continue reading First Tuesday in May, 8/22/2018
Review of the 8/20/2018 Town Council Meeting
First a summary of the facts, then detail on the facts and my take on the meeting. Continue reading Review of the 8/20/2018 Town Council Meeting
Merchant’s Tire, 8/17/2018
Merchant’s Tire left the Town of Vienna last month.
And this month — Va Tire and Auto is moving in. My wife just spotted a help wanted sign.
Could I possibly have been more off-base in my prior post about Merchant’s Tire. No, I don’t think so. That was about as wrong as wrong gets. For an economist, that showed a shocking lack of faith in the market. Mea culpa. Continue reading Merchant’s Tire, 8/17/2018
If you read nothing else, please read this.
The following is my summary of the Tequila Grande/444 Maple West proposal, to be discussed at the Monday August 20, 2018 Town Council meeting. Continue reading If you read nothing else, please read this.
Boycott, 8/16/2018
When I first learned about the proposal for 444 Maple West, one thought I had was to organize a prospective boycott of the retail space in that building. I thought that if enough people said they’d never shop or dine there, it might discourage the builder from putting that building up. Continue reading Boycott, 8/16/2018
changes
Edited 9/14/2018 to remove discussion of meetings prior to the 9/17/2019 Town Council meeting.
For the meeting on the August 20th, the text of the amendments is in red, here (.pdf). This appears unchanged in the materials for the September 17 Town Council meeting.
Arguably the most important change was a proposal to set a limit on density (dwelling units per acre), with the possibilities shown here (.pdf). As of now, in counting dwelling units, the Town proposes to make no distinctions among dwelling units, (e.g.) an efficiency apartment and a four-story 3200 square foot townhouse each count as one dwelling unit. Continue reading changes
A vision of Maple Avenue, 8/9/2018
Picture this:
It’s Saturday afternoon on a beautiful, crisp fall day. You’re at the Mosaic District, standing across the street from that lovely little Strawberry Lane park — where Angelica movie theater is. You could take in a movie, buy some high-end apparel, eat in any of 20 different restaurants, get some organic groceries — you name it. There’s a beautiful glass-fronted piece of modern architecture in front of you. And a little park, where people are just hanging out and enjoying the day — families with young kids, maybe a group tossing a frisbee, a skateboarder or two, the obligatory hipsters, some older couples out getting dinner, maybe some people eating take-out in the sunshine or sipping a smoothie.
And as you stand across the street from that, you take all of that in and say, yeah, that’s nice. That’s exactly the vibe I want to see in Vienna.
And translating that vibe to Maple Avenue is simple. Continue reading A vision of Maple Avenue, 8/9/2018