On Wednesday 3/27/2019 at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Planning Commission will have a public hearing to discuss 380 Maple West (40 condos plus retail at the intersection of Maple and Wade Hampton).
PUBLIC COMMENT IS INVITED. You may speak for up to three minutes regarding the 380 Maple West proposal.
Continue reading Post #212: Planning Commission meeting TONIGHT 3/27/2019, on 380 Maple West
I attended the 7 PM 3/26/2019 meeting of the Town of Vienna Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC). The BAC reports to the Town’s Transportation Safety Commission (TSC), and from there to the Town Council.
This BAC matters, in the context of MAC zoning, due to the Town’s much-hyped multi-modal transportation study, aka, the traffic study. “Multi-modal” means that in addition to cars, that study will include travel by bus, bike, foot, and possibly other means. Our Town government bike experts should matter in the ensuing discussion.
I recorded the meeting, and if you click this Google Drive link, your browser should open up an audio player. (If not, you can download it and listen to it.) Many parts are unintelligible as speakers frequently did not use microphones. Click here to get to my index of that recording (what was being discussed, when) is in this post, below.
In theory, the Town will post its own recording, but if so, I have yet to figure out where they are going to post it. Click here to see my final section on Town governance for a further discussion.
Otherwise, the first part of this post is about Capital Bikeshare. Continue reading Post #211: Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, 3/26/2019
This page gives a brief discussion of the cost of burying the power and phone lines along Maple Avenue. Best guess, this is going to cost $25M, or roughly the same as the cost of the new community center and the new police station, combined. It is not clear, yet, what portion of that we are going to pay for.
Continue reading Post #210: The cost of putting utilities underground
This week there is one Town of Vienna public meeting regarding changes to Maple Avenue Commercial (MAC) zoning.
On Wednesday 3/27/2019 at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Planning Commission will have a public hearing to discuss 380 Maple West (40 condos plus retail at the intersection of Maple and Wade Hampton).
PUBLIC COMMENT IS INVITED. You may speak for up to three minutes regarding the 380 Maple West proposal.
Materials for this meeting can be found at this URL:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3893999&GUID=7A08988A-C1C5-4E34-8BD2-3CF06EB9EF5A&Options=&Search=
In addition, at this meeting, the Planning Commission is expected to discuss and pass new by-laws. Among other things, these by-laws may require disclosure of any meetings between members of the Planning Commission and developers who have business before the Planning Commission.
On Friday and Saturday, 3/29/2019 and 3/30/2019, the Town will host Maple Avenue Community Workshops at the Vienna Community Center, to educate citizens about the benefits of Maple Avenue Commercial Zoning and to get feedback from citizens. More about these events can be found at these links:https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=4899&month=3&year=2019&day=29&calType=0
https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=4900&month=3&year=2019&day=30&calType=0
My skepticism toward these workshops is expressed here, and here.
I did a rough survey of Maple Avenue retail, just a quick count of establishments by type, following up on my prior estimate of the retail vacancy rate. The mix of Maple Avenue retail was mentioned at the Town’s 3/20/2019 joint work session, with the basic idea being that service-oriented retail is required to make retail work in Vienna.
In this brief posting, I’m going to give my characterization of Vienna retail. I don’t think a simple goods-versus-service cut is adequate to understand what we have now.
Continue reading Post #208: Maple Avenue retail, goods versus services
I attended last week’s joint work session of the Town Council, Planning Commission, and Board of Architectural Review. But I only caught the first few hours of it, and left around 11:45. As it turns out, the last half hour or so was probably the best part. I downloaded the Town’s audio, and here’s a minute-by-minute summary of what happened in the last half hour of that meeting. Continue reading Post #207: The last half hour of the 3/20/2019 joint work session
Edited to correct a significant error 3/23/2019. The front face of the building is nearly as tall as it will get (except for the largest tower, still to be built). They still need to add another 7′ to the front corners of the building.
I hate to keep re-using that title. I used that phrase here, and here.
But today, as I was driving into town from Oakton, I noticed a big HVAC unit installed on top of the Chick-fil-A car wash — in plain sight. This was as I was driving down the hill from Emanuel Lutheran church.
I didn’t understand that, because a) I thought those walls were as tall as they were going to get, and b) I doubt they would have made a mistake like that. So one of those two things must be wrong. Either the walls are going to get taller, or we will be treated to the sight of their HVAC every time we come into town. Continue reading Post #206: Chick-fil-A-car-wash: You still ain’t seen nothing yet, again.
Edited 3/22/2019 to soften my conclusions about Sunrise and 100 beds. Edited late 3/22/2019 to explain what all those eight-bed assisted living facilities are.
On this page, I assemble, map, and tabulate some fairly hard-to-find data on a) location of all licensed assisted living facilities in Fairfax County, and b) the base monthly rates charged by most of them (2017 data).
Surprisingly, the table of monthly rates goes a long way toward explaining Sunrise’s behavior at the last Planning Commission meeting. When questioned about five floors in their building, they were prepared. They whipped out several other sets of building plans, all of which had more-or-less the same number of beds as their original plan. And now I see that the Sunrise buildings in Fairfax (or, at least, for which I could find monthly price data) mostly cluster tightly between 100 and 120 beds. It looks like they build these for a standard operating model. So, one way or the other, I would guess, they’re going to get their 100 beds.
My audio recording and Excel “index” to the audio recording are located at this location on Google Drive. I left the meeting at 11:30 PM, so I do not have the last 45 minutes here. You would have to check the Town’s recording for that, which should be posted on this page no later than 3/22/2019, under “Media”.
And the Excel spreadsheet that is the “index” will (or will not) pop up if you click here.
The Town Council, Planning Commission, and Board of Architectural Review met jointly last night. I believe that’s a first for Vienna. The meeting started at 7:30. I gave up around 11:30 or so and went home. My understanding is that they went until just past midnight, so I’ll have to listen to the Town’s audio recording to catch the last of it.
I’ll post my recording of the audio on a separate page, once I have cleaned up the noise and such. The Town should have its audio recording up no later than tomorrow, so if you want to listen to it, you might do better by waiting. I have no doubt that the Town’s recording will be better than mine. Continue reading Post #203: A summary of the 3/20/2019 public meeting.