(This map was generated by walkscore.com. You can check out the walkability of your neighborhood by visiting their website and typing in your address.)
Town government has repeatedly said that MAC will make Maple Avenue more “pedestrian-friendly”. But that’s … questionable, at best. And in some key cases, I am almost sure that MAC-redeveloped property will make Maple less safe for pedestrians. Continue reading Pedestrian-friendly? 3/4/2019
This page explains a critical step coming up in the development of MAC zoning. Turns out, the Town is going to ask the citizens what they think about MAC, and then act on that. Which sounds pretty good, until you realize that the way they are proposing to do that is … confused, to be as polite as I can about it.
Read on and decide for yourself. This shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Continue reading If the community says No, No, No, then we’ll have to start all over, 3/4/2019
Let me briefly recap where we stand on building height, size, and floors, based on a quick summary of this Planning Commission meeting. Then offer one suggestion regarding five-floor MAC buildings: Trade the 5th floor for an overall smaller building. Continue reading 2019-02-27 Planning Commission work session — my humble suggestion
It’s hard to know where to start, but let me begin with the low-hanging fruit.
Seriously, we pay them to do this? Part 1
Arguably, the single nuttiest thing to come out of this meeting was beautiful set of poster boards, developed by Planning and Zoning, the purpose of which is to convince you that MAC development on Maple is just as warm, cozy, and human-scale as the development on Church Street. Continue reading 2019-02-27 Planning Commission work session, comments part 1
Unlike most of my other posts, I have no hard data here. I’m just going to tell you how I see it.
Sunrise is a major US corporation that has likely spent millions of dollars buying land and putting a contingent contract on land and preparing plans to build an assisted living facility in Vienna. Presumably, the Mayor invited them in and quietly assured them that they would be able to build here. At the very least, the Town was talking about a development at Maple and Center long before there was any public acknowledgement that it would be a Sunrise assisted living facility.
To get to the point, if you think the Town of Vienna could stop them from building anything they wanted, at this point, you’re probably out of touch with reality. Continue reading A little reality check regarding Sunrise and others, 2-28-2019
Edit: The Town’s audio is up now. Theirs has vastly less less crowd noise, but mine is louder, and might be more understandable for the quieter speakers. Take your pick.
You can find it at this link. On my system, the only browser that can deal with the Granicus system used by the Town is Chrome. If you don’t like the Granicus player, you can download the file (slowly) and play it on your own system.
To avoid confusion, I’ll post the “index” that matches the Town’s audio file here, on this page. The only major difference I see is that I left the tape running during the break and replaced that with silence. The Town just cut that out. The times in this file are approximate right for the Town’s recording. If you use my recording (Google Drive link below), use the index stored with my recording.
2019-02-27 Planning Commission work session index for TOV audio
Original post follows. Continue reading 2019-02-27 Planning Commission Work Session, audio and index to audio
I have a lot to say about last night’s Planning Commission work session, but I’m going to start my day by pointing out yet another bit of sleight-of-hand from our Department of Planning and Zoning.
The story so far. MAC zoning was sold, in part, on the notion that the buildings would be limited to four floors. Although some Planning Commission members now profess that this is irrelevant, I’ll remind people that the functional point of limiting the number of floors is to keep density down. This wasn’t some frill tacked onto the law purely for the look of it. It is the Town’s crude, home-grown method analogous to the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) regulations used by more sophisticated entities (such as Falls Church). It means you can cram only-so-much sellable or rentable floor space onto these MAC-zoned lots. Continue reading Oh, you meant residential mezzanine? Five floors are just fine then, 2/28/2019.
I attended last night’s meeting of the Traffic Transportation Safety Commission (TSC). You can find a (rather poor-quality) audio recording, and an Excel file that serves as an index to the recording, here on Google Drive. Basically, use the Excel spreadsheet to find the times for items you would care to listen to, then move to that spot in the recording to hear what was said.
I attended because TSC was considering an on-demand flashing sign at the crosswalk where Glen Avenue hits Courthouse Road. The sign is called a rectangular rapid flashing beacon (RRFB). It would allow pedestrians to stop traffic in order to get across Courthouse. We already have a few of these in Vienna. Here’s a view of an RRFB pair on Beulah.
Continue reading 2019-02-26 Transportation Safety Commission, audio recording and notes
As you can read in my just-prior posting, the Town surprised me by posting the video from last night’s meeting in a very timely fashion. For those of you who would rather not watch the entire video, here’s my “index” of the video. It’s an Excel workbook (.xls) showing times within the Town meeting video, and my brief notes for what was being said at that time, by whom. You can scan it for items of interest, then go to the video to see what was said.
2019-02-25 Town Council meeting, index to video
Use this along with the Town’s video. You can find the Town’s video at this link. On my computer, the only browser that will play the video is Chrome.
I suppose that, because I did the work, I can use this index to point out a few things. Please keep in mind that times are approximate, and may be off by a few seconds here or there.
Continue reading Index to Town Council 2-25-2019 Video, posted 2-26-2019
This post is not yet complete. It will change over the course of today (2/26/2019) as I add more video segments. At present, it gives you immediate access to video of the MAC “visual preference survey” portion of last night’s Town Council meeting .
EDIT: The Town has posted its own video of last night’s meeting, as of about noon today. That’s a first, as you can see by looking at the meetings calendar to see that the next-most-recent Town Council video dates back to 1/7/2019. If this rapid turnaround reflects a new policy, then it is a material and welcome change. As of now, it appears that the Town has moved from a policy of holding the videos of meetings for months before posting, to a policy of releasing them immediately.
Click the meetings calendar link above, then click the video link to get to the Town’s recording of last night’s meeting. If you can’t get the video to play, try using the Google Chrome browser. On my system, that’s the only browser that works with the Town’s video host. Continue reading Town Council meeting video, 2-25-2019, UPDATED to reflect a what I sincerely hope is a change in Town policy