Category: MAC zoning

There are two public meetings this week relevant to MAC zoning.

Monday 8/19/2019, starting at 7 PM in Town Hall, Vienna Town Council will have a work session followed by a meeting at 8 PM. 

The work session (7 PM) will be a presentation on the “Joint Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study”.

No documents or other materials appear to have been posted for this session.  The web page describing this event can be accessed here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4086168&GUID=3555C726-7394-4291-A1FA-32D9382ADF93&Options=&Search=

The 8 PM meeting includes three relevant items:
Item 19-1308:  Feasibility study with options for a Patrick Henry Library parking garage.
Item 19-1378:  Rescinding the narrowing of Wade Hampton Drive for 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Wade Hampton and Maple),
Item 19-1394:  Amending the existing standard commercial zoning to provide a streetscape closer to what MAC requires.

Meeting materials can be found at various points on this page:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=684462&GUID=3202EA1F-D3E6-4BCC-84F2-732A3A357BF3&Options=info&Search=

See Post #347 for my writeup of what will be discussed.

---

Tuesday, 8/20/2019, at 7 PM in Town Hall, the Vienna Public Art(s) Commission agenda includes discussion of public art requirements for MAC projects.

The Town’s calendar announcement for the Public Art Commission is at this link:
https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=4622&month=8&year=2019&day=20&calType=0

The agenda for the Public Arts Commission (MicroSoft Word) is at this link:
https://www.viennava.gov/Archive.aspx?ADID=4346

N.B.:  The website calls this the Public Art Commission, the minutes are labeled Public Arts Commission.  I’m not sure which one is correct.

In an earlier post, I summarized how the City of Falls Church goes about doing “MAC-like” projects, versus the Town of Vienna’s MAC zoning.  You can read the details in Post #306.

In a nutshell, Falls Church uses “Special Exception” zoning.  Instead of dictating how the buildings must look (as with MAC), Falls Church described what the City of Falls Church is expecting to get from any such development, and then says, in so many words, within limits, “make me an offer”.  If you want an exception to the standard zoning, tell us what you’re going to do for the City of Falls Church in return.

Turns out, Leesburg also uses special exception zoning.  A colleague brought this new project in downtown Leesburg to my attention.

Put aside the fact that this stumpy (mid-rise timber-framed concrete podium apartment building) could easily be mistaken for the 444 Maple West/Tequila Grande building.   It has the same, look-alike, pseudo-many-buildings facade that appears to be mandatory around here but is already passé on the West Coast.

The important issue is that when I went to find the plans, the Town of Leesburg lists it as one of their special exception zoning projects.

OK, at this point, I have to wonder how many other local jurisdictions take this “Special Exception” zoning approach, and how many take an approach like the Town of Vienna’s MAC zoning?  Is our approach like our hundred-day rule (Post #247), rule, i.e., something that only exists in the Town of Vienna and is use by literally no other jurisdiction in Virginia?

Just a quick search for “Special Exception” and then various jurisdictions reveals that, at the minimum, Fairfax County also has a special exception process.  (But I suspect that’s in addition to a generally more complex set of zones throughout the county — so, likely, they have some sort of MAC-analog zones as well.)

Beyond that, I had a hard time telling whether Herndon or the City of Fairfax used special exception zoning in the same way that Falls Church and Leesburg do.

My only point is that the “special exception” approach to redevelopment is not the exception.  At least three local jurisdictions — Falls Church, Leesburg, and Fairfax County — use that method.  Maybe, then, this is worth a look, if the Town ever gets around to revising MAC in any fundamental way.

As noted in Post #333 and Post #339, the project at 901 Glyndon proceeded as an unquestioned by-right development.

That lot was zoned as commercial property.   In theory — or, at least, historically — commercial zoning meant that at least half the building had to be occupied for commercial purposes.   I.e., any housing had to occupy less than half of the building.  That’s more-or-less the point of commercial zoning — you want to restrict an area to be primarily for commercial use.

Yet, in the case of 901 Glyndon, more than two-thirds of the occupied space is housing.  It’s two floors of condos over first-floor retail space/parking ramp.

We have yet another building proposed in Vienna, 145 Church Street (across from the U.S. Post Office), in a commercial zone, where, again, more than two-thirds of the occupied space appears to be housing.  Same model:  two floors of housing over some retail.   The only information I can find is from a flyer circulated to the neighbors.  Rumor has it that the Town of Vienna will buy parking spaces in this proposed new building.  If true, then presumably the Town of Vienna is on board with it.

For 145 Church Street, that’s within the Church Street zoning district (C1-B), so many special rules apply.  Maybe that’s by-right development, maybe not.  I’m not really sure this counts as an example of by-right construction of a building that is mostly housing, with some retail, in a commercial zone.  But it certainly counts as evidence that this type of construction appears to be profitable in downtown Vienna.

So here are my questions.

First, am I correct in thinking that, historically, the Town of Vienna required that at least 51% of the occupied space in any commercial building be used for commercial purposes?  That seems to be the plain reading of the statute, where “principally occupied and used” for commercial purposes is written into the law.  I certainly recall having heard that this is one reason we needed MAC zoning — to allow mixed-use buildings that would not be otherwise be feasible due to the existing commercial zoning requirement that buildings be used primarily for commercial (not housing) purposes.  (The idea being that second-floor retail space commands such low rents that it makes a building uneconomic.  And you’d have to have half the second floor be retail or office to meet the “principally occupied” clause.)

Second, what changed, exactly, to allow primarily residential buildings to be built, by right, in the commercial zone?  Is there some legal fiction involved (e.g., they now count the parking places along with the actual occupied area, and the retail space with the associated parking is half the building?)  Or does Planning and Zoning simply ignore the “principally used” clause, as long as their is some retail space on the first floor?

Third, is this the intent of the law?  At some point in the distant past, Vienna Town Council passed the zoning regulations as they now stand.  Presumably, the intent of that portion of the law was to make sure that Vienna’s commercial districts were used for commerce.  But now, with no public discussion, the interpretation of that law appears to have changed materially.  Now, apparently, if a building has some of the occupied space devoted to commercial activity, Town staff interpret that as satisfying the regulations for by-right construction in the Town of Vienna commercial zone.

This is now an important point, because the 145 Church Street proposal makes it seem that construction of this type may be profitable within the Town of Vienna commercial zone.  In other words, the change in Town staff’s interpretation of the law may actually result in new buildings being built, based on that new interpretation.

I’m neither for nor against this new interpretation of the Town’s commercial zoning.  If we’re going to have mixed-use buildings, I’d rather have three-story 35′ (plus parapets and decorations) than 62′ (including parapets and decorations).

But I do think that the Town Council ought to step back and ask, in public, is this what we want?  Is by-right housing, with some retail, on Maple Avenue, what the Town of Vienna wants as its future?  (Rather than simply stumble into it, as a side-effect of Town staff’s interpretation of statute.)

And here, I am specifically calling on all those people who made a big deal about MAC protecting the Town of Vienna, because those mandatory review processes in MAC were supposed to guarantee a quality outcome.  About how awful and dreadful it would be to allow by-right construction in place of MAC construction.  All of you people — and here, I think our Department of Planning and Zoning requires a specific mention — all of you should have some public discussion as to what you make of the 901 Glyndon precedent and the proposed 145 Church building.  Because if Town staff’s interpretation of the law now provides a back-door approach to profitable by-right construction of housing on Maple, that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with in a rational fashion.  Not just ignored until the next big building goes up on Maple Avenue.

If this is the new normal for by-right construction along Maple, then, among other things, that shifts the balance of power between developers and the Town when bargaining over MAC proposals.  For example, the Director of Planning and Zoning briefly mentioned the option to change MAC to a three-floor limit at the ends of Maple (two floors of housing over some retail) and reserve four-floor construction for the core of the town.  From the standpoint of economics, that would not seem to be feasible if two-floors-of-housing-over-some-retail is a by-right option.