I’m sure you all marked October 3rd on your calendars (Post #366). Or not.
The initial scheduling hearing for the Sunrise lawsuit was supposed to occur today. But it will not.
They were given a continuance until 11/4/2019. That’s via per Shelley Ebert, who has diligently continued to track this.
That’s all I know. Check back in a month.
Time flies.
The Town of Vienna is now in the process of modifying the MAC zoning rules. And, in addition, it has chosen to rewrite its entire commercial zoning code at the same time. Presumably, all of that will be done by the time the MAC moratorium is lifted, which (if all goes correctly) will now occur in June 2020. (For background, see the writeup of the Town Council’s most recent discussion of rewriting of the zoning rules, the third item in Post #378).
Two weeks ago I wrote down my prediction for what the revised Town of Vienna commercial zoning will look like (Post #383). Best guess, when the dust has settled, there won’t be much change to MAC, the Town will apply MAC to most-but-not-all of Maple, and the Town will formalize a policy of allowing commercial buildings to be mostly housing.
In this post, I explain why I think it’s headed in that direction. Continue reading Post #402: It’s tough to make predictions, part 2
In keeping with my last post, I have to correct something I said about structures built “by right” under our existing commercial zoning, in Post #346.
I pointed to 901 Glyndon and a proposed building across from the US Post Office (145 Church) as examples of by-right commercial buildings that were mostly housing. Both 901 (already built) and the proposed 145 Church consist of two floors of housing over some retail. They would not meet (what I thought was) the “primarily commercial” standard written into the zoning rules — that commercial buildings have to be primarily (51%) occupied for commercial use.
I have since been told that neither of these buildings were (or are) being built under the standard zoning rules for commercial property along Maple Avenue in Vienna (zones C1, C1A, C2).
The parcel at 901 Glyndon was zoned commercial prior to the annexation of that land by the Town of Vienna. So the story there is that, despite being shown as commercial (C1) zoning on the Town’s zoning map, and by Fairfax County’s tax map, apparently it’s not. Apparently, the zoning is something else, and that something else allowed the construction of a building that is primarily housing, as a commercial building.
The story for the proposed 145 Church building is that in the Church Street zone (C-1B), two floors of housing over some retail is OK. I tried to pin that down by reading the regulations, but failed. I have to take that as a matter of faith.
Assuming that’s all correct, the upshot is that neither of these buildings establishes any precedent under the standard commercial zoning that applies on Maple (C1, C1A, C2).
I needed to set that straight before proceeding to my next post.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” When seemingly knowledgeable readers offer corrections … I make corrections.
1: The Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) has never been asked to act proactively to prevent a problem. Implied in Post #394 and Post #395.
False: An informed reader tells me that the TSC proposed pro-active traffic control measures in at least one situation: Attempting to limit cut-through traffic in the area around John Marshall Dr NE/MacArthur Ave NE/McKinley St NE (and Talisman Rd.) in anticipation of the road closure and construction improvements of Beulah Rd. Vienna and Fairfax added speed tables to the area prospectively.
It’s worth putting a pin in this one for several reasons. First, it shows that TSC can act prospectively, and is not strictly bound by the rules of the Vienna Citizen’s Guide. Second, you can’t find any trace of this, on-line, on the Town’s website or elsewhere. (Or, at least, I could not, after considerable searching). On-line minutes for the TSC only go back to 2017. This came to light purely by chance, as somebody who knew the facts happened to read my post and was motivated enough to set me straight. Absent an easily-accessed written record, Vienna’s institutional memory is slowly erased as citizens move onto and off of various boards and commissions. I think that’s inefficient and unfortunate.
2: There’s no plausible explanation for the contradiction between a) the perceived increase in the length of backups at the Maple/Courthouse light and b) VDOT data that show no increase in traffic on that road. Implied in Post #396.
False: A reader sent me one possible explanation. The white lane striping on Kingsley effectively prevents cars from forming two lines at the Nutley/Kingsley intersection, encouraging traffic to filter through the side streets up to Tapawingo or Courthouse.
In the past, two lines would form, for left turns and right turns. Now, those turning right (north) on Nutley have to wait in line with those making the much-more-difficult left (south) onto Nutley. And, in general, the length of the queue at that intersection increased for all individuals.
In the case of my correspondent, he no longer takes Kingsley to get to Nutley northbound in the morning. Instead, he heads up (north) to Tapawingo or Courthouse, and then to Nutley. If enough people did that, it would increase the traffic entering those roads via the neighborhood streets.
Depending on where VDOT habitually sets up its traffic counter(s) on Courthouse, that traffic filtering up the residential streets, from the south, could plausibly slip onto Courthouse without being counted by VDOT. At any rate, so far, that’s the only explanation I’ve stumbled across that would explain how the apparent backups at the light appear longer, but the objectively counted traffic has not increased.
3. Stop signs are a cheap and effective means for slowing down traffic and improving pedestrian safety. This was more or less implied in Post #395.
Maybe yes, maybe no. For the first time, I heard an explicit contrary view that stop signs control speed: “People notoriously blow through unwarranted stop signs.”
I have always thought of myself as a fairly mainstream kind of guy, but this shows what a sheltered life I have led. It never even occurred to me that a significant number of people would simply ignore a stop sign. I mean, what kind of a person drives through a stop sign? I’m such a nerd, I stop at stop signs even when I’m bicycling. Which is hardly the norm for adult bicyclists. (I use a common motorcyclists’ rule: one foot must be placed flat on the ground.)
The bottom line is that some stop signs may have little effect without active police enforcement. And that significantly limits their effective use, and makes them a far more costly control measure as well. As I calculate it, we have about one police officer, per shift, for every 32 acres of Vienna, assuming all they do is traffic enforcement 24/7. Given our low crime rate, I wouldn’t exactly say they are spread thin, but clearly they can’t provide much enforcement at the typical stop sign.
That said, while some people will blow through stop signs on neighborhood roads (as was reported on Roland Road in my neighborhood), I bet people would think twice before doing so when there routinely are witnesses. Which means, in practice, on an arterial roadway. So while stop signs may not be fully effective in the depths of the neighborhood, when traffic is sparse, I would not ignore their potential along a major thoroughfare like Courthouse. Certainly, I’ve never seen a car blow through the three-way stop at Courthouse and Locust. Based on that, I’d bet a stop at (e.g.) Courthouse and Ware would be routinely obeyed.
4: A double-yellow line indicates a major road, or maybe gets painted as a standard safety measure to “narrow the lanes” visually. That was in Post #395, in the discussion of traffic on Kingsley.
False: I have now been told that the Town paints a double-yellow line as a matter of course on all the wider roads. Because Kingsley is 35′ wide, presumably, it got a double-yellow line without regard to any safety consequences.
This post is more-or-less a continuation of Post #396, traffic trend on Courthouse. I had to download all the VDOT traffic counts to do that, so I figured I might as well package those numbers up in some form that people could access easily.
What I found when I did that is that, per VDOT, traffic counts are stable-to-declining throughout Vienna. So it’s not just Courthouse where VDOT shows no increase in vehicle counts. It’s pretty much all of Vienna … including I-66.
Hmm.
The data file below is an Excel workbook (.xls) summarizing 2006 – 2018 Town of Vienna traffic counts on the VDOT website.
Here are a few things to note.
My main takeway is that there has been no strong upward trend in cars on the road more-or-less anywhere in Vienna. Or, at least, that’s what VDOT says. This assumes that VDOTs methods are consistent across years.
Here are two ways to see that, both telling the same story. The first is a count of “vehicle miles traveled” in Vienna, excluding I-66, per VDOT. This is a VDOT estimate of all the miles, that all vehicles combined, traveled on Vienna streets in any one year. The second is a simpler way to get at an aggregate, totaling the vehicle counts across the 24 street segments in Vienna that were reported consistently over the entire period. Either way you do it, there’s no trend to speak of. Both of these graphs exclude I-66.
The Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) met last night. See my just-previous post for the background. I only stayed for the portion dealing with my neighborhood. This is my brief review of what went on. You can access my recording of that meeting at this Google Drive link. Continue reading Post #395: Review of last night’s TSC meeting
Tuesday, 9/24/2019 at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, Transportation Safety Commission will meet and take public comment on traffic safety issues in the neighborhood bordered by Maple, Nutley, and Courthouse. This includes both current issues and “impact of future development on those issues”.
Citizens are invited to speak, with a time limit of three minutes.
For background, see Post #389. If you live in the area bounded by Courthouse, Maple, and Nutley, consider attending tonight’s meeting and speaking up. The meeting starts at 8 PM.
In this post, I want to state what I hope to get out of this meeting. Likely, I will be adding to this post over the course of the day.
Mainly, I hope that the TSC will consider what can be done to address the future impact that MAC development will have. To me, that’s what makes this inherently different from anything the TSC has ever done.
The TSC listens to citizen complaints about current conditions all the time. There is a process in place for citizens to petition for measures to address existing problems (the Citizen’s Guide to Traffic Calming in Vienna (.pdf). The TSC occasionally has a town-wide review of extant problem areas, most recently in 2008 and 2010.
But the TSC has never been asked to come up with proactive measures to address the expected future fallout from a change in Vienna’s zoning rules. That’s new. And to me, given the context, that’s the main point of this exercise.
There is a process in place for dealing with current problems. For any current problem, if we who live in this neighborhood were sufficiently upset, and someone wanted to go to the trouble of collecting signatures from the required 75%/50% of all affected households, then we could go through the procedures outlined in the Citizen’s Guide (cited above) to deal with any current problems.
Aside: Sidewalks, however, seem to be a separate issue, and not nearly as transparent as other safety measures. Although sidewalks are never mentioned in the Citizen’s Guide (cited above), it appears that citizen requests for sidewalks must go through the petition process outlined in the Guide. A revised version of that Guide (still in draft form) does, in fact, mention sidewalks.
But there is no process within Vienna for dealing with the likely future problems from redevelopment. And yet (see below), a full build-out of Maple under MAC zoning will surely generate some significant traffic issues. So, to me, this should be about how best to deal with the traffic impacts that are projected to arise as MAC zoning converts Maple Avenue into a high-density housing district. Continue reading Post #394: Tonight’s Transportation Safety Commission meeting: Please don’t boil the frog. Update 2
The first item on the 9/19/2019 Board of Architectural Review meeting was a look at the final plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market development. You can see them at this location. This is a quick summary from the Town’s recording, which you may find on the Town’s Legistar/Granicus calendar.
The BAR took about an hour and fifteen minutes to tweak details of the design. At the end, with a few caveats, the plans were unanimously approved. My reading of this is that the only major item yet to be resolved is the exact design of the mural on the front of the building. Presumably, that will be up to the Vienna Public Art (or Arts) Commission.
These three drawings below show the Maple Avenue view of: What the BAR passed originally; what was then handed back to the BAR as having been passed by Town Council (Marco Pologate); and then the final approved plan.
Weirdly, you can see that a ghost of the original building lives on in the final drawing. The right side of the building, receding into the distance, remains a view of the original building. (Plausibly, the right side of the left portion of the building, receding into the distance, is also a remnant of the original drawing.)
Here’s a close-up of the building at the left, in the same sequence: what the BAR passed originally, what was then handed back to the BAR as having been passed by Town Council (Marco Pologate), and then the final plan.
At any rate, barring any other surprises, the bottom picture is what you will see going up over the next year or so, at the site of the former Marco Polo.
If I had to offer an epitaph for this, it would be the following:
A) Kudos to the BAR for fixing this as best they could. Just getting rid of the bricked-in windows was worth their review time, in my opinion.
B) Did the Town learn anything about the review process here? And is there any plan, by the Town, to change anything about how they go about this? In short, are they going to learn from their mistakes? Or are they just going to shrug this one off and keep on doing what they are doing?
I have already made the point that there needs to be more communication between these bodies (BAR, PC, and TC) during the review process. In particular, I called for the chair of each body to pass along a short written summary of the proceedings, to avoid the sort of internal inconsistency that occurred with the Sunrise assisted living review (Post #301).
But in addition, I would say that this whole affair points out the need for some checks and balances within the Town of Vienna government. At the minimum, somebody in the Town government, outside of the Department of Planning and Zoning, needs to compare the plans between meetings, to see that they do not change between the time one entity approves them, and the next entity gets to review them. Otherwise, having demonstrated that staff are willing to change the plans quietly between approvals, there’s nothing to stop that from happening again.
Theorem: Potential parking spots on Wade Hampton = 11 + 1 = 12 (Post #238r)
Proof: Photo 3:30 PM 9/19/2019
Lemma 1: 7 west
Lemma 2: 5 east
Q.E.D.
Bonus question, points awarded only if you can answer this without using internet search:
Who was Wade Hampton?
What is the connection to Gone With the Wind?
Best answer, courtesy of a reader:
“Wade Hampton was a civil engineer back in the early days of Vienna and designed out some of our roadways. He was known for designing especially tight and blind turns such as the current Wade Hampton/Roland Rd and Walnut Lane. He would often be quoted when people complained about this design as saying, “Frankly, my Dear, I don’t give a damn if you don’t like my roadway designs.” The phrase was later ripped off by the writer of Gone With the Wind.”
The Town of Vienna is asking Fairfax County for funds from the Fairfax Economic Support Fund. They’d like Fairfax to pay for half of a $100,000 economic development study for the Town. A brief presentation on that was given at the 9/17/2019 County Board of Supervisor’s meeting. You can see the contents of the presentation at this link (.pdf).
The point of the Fairfax Economic Support Fund is to invest in development around the county, where the expected increase in Fairfax County taxes will cover the cost of the investment. Fairfax County staff appear to judge that this study will boost tax revenues by more than the $100,000 cost. So they recommended funding it.
For this posting, the purpose of the proposed study does not much matter. Based on the bullet points, it sounds like this could be merely finding some justification for MAC zoning. (“Placemaking” is a giveway there.) But it might actually be a legitimate market analysis. If so, I’d applaud that, because, better late than never. It would be good to have some reasoned analysis of (e.g.) how much more retail space Maple Avenue can be expected to absorb, what types of new retailers are likely to enter that market, and so on.
The only point I want to make here is a technical one. The Vienna proposal is cited as showing a “15% vacancy rate”. And that is immediately interpreted as a retail vacancy rate on Maple.
First, that’s not a vacancy rate. Or, at least, it’s not comparable to the way anyone else calculates a vacancy rate. Vacancy rates — office, retail, or commercial — are always expressed as a percent of the available space. (Vacant square footage over total square footage.) The Town’s number, by contrast, appears to be a count of addresses (“spaces”). The Town counted 138 vacant “spaces”, of which 68 were on Maple.
So, e.g., Giant Food counts as one space. The Maple Avenue Market would have counted as one space. Those two would be weighted equally in a simple count of addresses.
Second, it’s not clear that’s a count of retail spaces only. That matters materially, because office vacancy rates in Fairfax County are quite high (see below). My guess is that the Town’s records do not show which spaces are retail and which are office, and that in all likelihood, that’s a count of all commercial addresses in Vienna.
Third, that’s not Maple Avenue in isolation. The overall fraction of addresses that are empty appear to be for the Town as a whole, not for Vienna. (I can’t know for sure, because there doesn’t seem to be any copy of this study available on-line on either the Vienna or Fairfax County websites).
This is not a criticism of the number. A quick-and-dirty throw-away number like that , that’s perfectly fine if it gets the Town the money it was seeking. The Town took its records, counted addresses, and used that as part of its proposal asking Fairfax to cover half the cost of the study. I doubt, for example, that the Town’s tax records list the square footage of each establishment.
This is a criticism of how that number is being quoted and used. My only technical point is that you should NOT compare the Town’s number to any published estimate of retail vacancy rates. Published estimates will be done properly, based on square footage. The Town’s number, by contrast, equates (e.g.) a tiny shop space with Giant Food.
FWIW, here are some recent (2014) estimates of actual retail and office vacancy rates, prepared by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) using data from CoStar. The numbers here will vary modestly from other estimates, based on the exact details of how they went about the calculation.
Source: MWCOG, CoStar.
Finally, also FWIW, if you want to see how I calculated a ground-floor retail vacancy rate for Maple, showing data and methods, see this post. Those numbers are a little stale at this point, but they still shouldn’t be too far off. For further background on the mix of retail on Maple, see Post #201 and Post #208.
