Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Traffic: Ready-Fire-Aim, or, Better Late Than Never? 1/2/2018

At the end of last year, in my post on the Town’s plan to rewrite the entire building code,  I noted that the Town of Vienna was finally going to do a study of economic conditions on Maple Avenue (.pdf).  In effect, it was going to do a study to see whether or not MAC zoning was needed, and what impact it might have.

Separately, in my discussion of Town’s most recent capital budget, I saw that they finally decided to do some basic estimate of the cost of putting the Maple Avenue utility lines underground.  That is, a study to see what it will cost to do what the Town has already decided must be done.

I characterized these actions as the Town’s Ready-Fire-Aim approach to MAC zoning.  Half a decade (and counting) after writing the law, they were actually going to try to look at some facts, and some economic and cost analysis.

As the third installment of the Ready-Fire-Aim approach, the Town is now going to do a study of what MAC will likely do to Maple Avenue traffic over the next decade or so.  The proposal to award what appears to be a sole-source contract to a nationally-known firm (Kimley-Horn) was announced in the agenda (.pdf) for the Town Council’s January 7 2019 meeting.  It appears from the documents that Town staff decided to do all this back in November. Continue reading Traffic: Ready-Fire-Aim, or, Better Late Than Never? 1/2/2018

I’m going to have to ditch the postcard alerts, updated 1/15/2019

My system of using postcards to keep people informed about MAC zoning no longer works.  There are too many buildings in play, events are occurring too fast, the Town’s moratorium on new MAC proposals hasn’t actually stopped the Town from furthering new MAC proposals, and I typically have (maybe) one-to-three days’ notice that the one of the Town’s various boards (Town Council, Planning Commission, Board of Architectural Review, and so on) will be discussing some relevant item. Continue reading I’m going to have to ditch the postcard alerts, updated 1/15/2019

MAC is just the beginning — take a look at what the Town is planning next. Updated 12/4 for a discussion of “by right”.

REVISION:  After writing the article below, I’ve heard from other people who have looked at this and come to a different conclusion.  Others believe this is just a routine, long-overdue maintenance of the Town of Vienna building code.  Under that interpretation, the verbiage about increased redevelopment and about more mixed-use buildings outside of Maple and Church is just there to get Fairfax County to pay for the work under the guise of “economic growth”.  I guess that’s possible.  But the plain reading of what was written is still as outlined below, in the quoted sections.  It was certainly written up with an agenda of increasing redevelopment and bringing mixed-used buildings to areas where those are not allowed (or at least, not economically feasible) under current Town of Vienna code.

My original writeup follows: Continue reading MAC is just the beginning — take a look at what the Town is planning next. Updated 12/4 for a discussion of “by right”.

Two months into the MAC moratorium, an update 11/20/2018

Background on the MAC moratorium

At the 9/17/2018 Town Council meeting, the Town Council voted to suspend any further acceptance of MAC rezoning applications until (probably) after the next Town election in May 2019.  You can see my write up of that here.  In addition to the three projects that had already been submitted, two more were submitted prior to the moratorium deadline, and it appears essentially certain that the Town will approve both of those additional projects. Continue reading Two months into the MAC moratorium, an update 11/20/2018