Category: MAC zoning

EDIT/ADDENDUM:  After I wrote this, a colleague directed me to look at the Fairfax FIDO website.  There, you can look up the status of all Fairfax County building permits, for any building in the Town of Vienna.  Based on that, the Wawa application for a permit to operate a food service establishment is still active.  (In fact, now that I look closely, they have half-a-dozen permits, everything from signs to electrical work to interior remodeling).  As of now, based on that, it definitely appears that Wawa is coming to Vienna.  Despite the prominent “for rent” sign that remains up at that property.

Original posting follows:

As noted in this earlier post, and continuing to Post #241, earlier this year, Wawa sought and obtained approval to remake the Coldwell Banker building (corner of Nutley and Maple) into a Wawa convenience store.  

Meanwhile, yet a different entity sought permission to revive the dead gas station at Maple and Park, and add a full-sized convenience store. 

This led me to speculate that we were going to end up with more full-sized convenience stores than the Town of Vienna could support.  At least based on the history of 7-11s in Vienna (outlined in this post).  If all this planned development occurred, we’d have four full-sized convenience stores, plus mini-marts at some of the gas stations.  Whereas the Town did not appear to be able to support three 7-11s.  (The third Vienna 7-11 was located at Maple and Courthouse.)

Anyway, a colleague pointed out that the property-for-rent sign has not come down at the Coldwell Banker building.  To the contrary, it looks like they put up a brand new and more prominent sign.

So that’s a bit of a puzzler.  And a bit of a worry.  For the following reasons:

1.  One corner of that intersection is already slated to be covered by a big MAC building (444 Maple West/Tequila Grande).  You have to wonder whether somebody will want to build its twin right across the street.
2. The building next door to Coldwell Banker is also vacant (the former Joe’s Pasta), and is being offered for rent by the same company handling the former Coldwell Banker building.
3. In a prior Town Council session, one Town Council member let slip that it would be OK to lengthen the left-turn-lane on Nutley, at that intersection, because the buildings across the street would be combined anyway (and so would still have a viable entrance on Maple).  So, apparently, almost a year ago, something may or may not have been in the works regarding those properties.
4. For these narrow, deep lots, erasing a lot line (combining lots) is hugely profitable under MAC, because it allows much more building to be built on the same acreage, assuming that individual buildings on individual lots would sit five or ten feet off the common lot line.
5. But, isn’t the Town going to extend the moratorium on new MAC buildings?  That seems to be the common assumption, but so far there has been no discussion and no progress on that.  And time is short, as noted in Post #323 and Post #325.
6. And maybe they don’t need MAC.  It sure looks like 901 Glyndon may have set a precedent of unquestioned by-right construction of two floors of housing over one floor of retail, merely by the Town declaring that such a building is “primarily occupied” for commercial use.  In other words, it looks like Town staff can simply declare that three-story mixed-use construction (two floors of housing over one floor of retail) is now OK, by right, under Vienna’s standard commercial zoning.

Maybe that new sign is just a harmless bit of theater.  It might be there just to help reinforce the narrative that Maple Avenue retail is in crisis.  Then again, maybe it means that Wawa changed its mind.  All told, I think I’ll feel more comfortable when I see Wawa get started on making over the Coldwell Banker building.

First, a tip of the hat to Dave Patariu, a lawyer here in Vienna who obtained a copy of the Sunrise legal complaint from the Fairfax County Circuit Court and shared that with me.  If you want your own copy (.pdf), you may download it at this Google Drive link.

Next  — and don’t get me wrong here, my tax dollars will end up paying for this just as much as yours will — this is not a surprise.   It seemed like the logical thing for Sunrise to do, as I noted in Post #321.

OK, now for a summary of the complaint.  Here’s where it starts to get weird.

Continue reading Post #342: The Sunrise lawsuit: $30M and counting.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the write up.  They’ll be moving this fall to the former Bob Evans in Oakton, just the other side of the AT&T building on Chain Bridge Road.

I now know that there is a lawsuit.  It’ll be a few days before I can learn the details.

Continue reading Post #335: Sunrise sues the Town of Vienna.

The Board of Architectural Review (BAR) met at 8 this morning (8/2/2019) to review the plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market development.  The materials for that meeting may be found at this location.  My recording of the session can be found at this Google Drive link (download 2019-08-02 ….).  There were large stretches of the meeting where the microphones were not used, so some portions may be too faint to hear.

The key points are that 1) there was no material change in how this building would look and function and 2) the BAR will almost certainly provide final approval for this.  The next meeting of the BAR is Thursday 8/15/2019. Continue reading Post #334: 8/2/2019 meeting of the BAR re Marco Polo/Vienna Market

Are there any radical solutions to congestion on Maple Avenue?  Any magic bullets that appear even remotely plausible?

When it comes to Maple Avenue and traffic, people seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing solutions that could not plausibly be implemented.  I thought it might be worthwhile just to do a brief writeup of what I believe is probably not feasible on Maple.  Ever.  And here, I am happy to say that if I’ve gotten something wrong, do not hesitate to email me (chogan@directresearch.com) so I can correct it.  It seems remarkably hard to track down even basic facts about what might or might not be feasible on Maple.

The gist of this is, there’s really not a whole lot you can do, realistically, to create a vast improvement in Maple Avenue traffic congestion.  If there were, somebody would have implemented it already.

If you already know or have guessed that, you have no need to read this posting.  In this posting, I explain why you’ll probably never see these solutions:

• Widen the road (feasible, but ugly)
• Replace lights with traffic circles (not enough room, could not handle peak Maple Avenue volume efficiently)
• Reversible center lane (dangerous, plausibly only helps with AM rush hour, but not destructive — Maple would look more-or-less the same).
• Bypass (destructive, requires W+OD crossing, unlikely to carry enough traffic to make a material difference).

Continue reading Post 331: No magic bullets for Maple Avenue traffic

There is only one public meeting this week relevant to MAC zoning.

Friday, 8/2/2019, at 8 AM (yes, AM) in Town Hall, the Board of Architectural Review will hold a work session to examine revised plans for the Vienna Market/Marco Polo development.

The meeting materials for this work session are located here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4073485&GUID=4FEE28BF-51F1-4DED-9053-000950DF0218&Options=&Search=

For background, see Post #326.

Below is a time series of the Church Street side of the building, where I have crudely removed the background.  The top is the original concept plan as approved by the BAR.  The middle one is the “plain vanilla” generic-NoVA town houses for what I termed the “bait and switch” (Post #245).  The third is what was presented to the Bar on 6/14/2019 (Post #296).  The very last one is what will be presented to the BAR this Friday 8/2/2019.

At this level of detail, the only changes for this last set of drawings, for the Church Street view, are the following:

1. The rusticated (roughened) brick portions (the lighter-colored brick) now go halfway up the first and third buildings.
2. A horizontal decorative element ( ledge? molding?) was removed from the walls of the first and second buildings.

 

What you really can’t see well from any of the drawings is that alleyways lined with garage doors will be visible, from Church Street, between the 1st and 2nd buildings, and between the 3rd and 4th buildings.  I.e., beneath the bay windows that face each on the 1st and 2nd buildings, there are garage doors.  And the ground level is taken up with garage doors down the entire length of the building.  That’s a common enough thing in NoVA these days, but a novelty on Church or Maple in Vienna.  You may or may not see the other end of that alleyway, as you drive past on Maple, depending on the landscaping.

The only other change that was obvious to me, just glancing at the new plans, is that they darkened the color of the retail “podium” portion of the building.   Between the last set of plans that I have, and this most recent set, the very light-colored brick was replaced with darker brick.  (This reduced what I called in a prior post the “came out of a different set of Legos” effect that the light-colored podium had before.)  They also added ornaments to the windows.  This is the before-and-after, below:

 

As I noted in Post #323, the deadline for end of the moratorium on new MAC applications is fast approaching, and the Town government doesn’t seem to be taking any action either to revise the MAC statute or to extend the deadline.

At the end of Post #323, I laid out my biggest fear about some glitch temporarily ending the MAC moratorium.  I’m an economist, and my firm belief is that seemingly crazy things can happen when there’s a lot of money at stake, as there is now on Maple.

In this post, by contrast, I’ll assume the moratorium is extended without a hitch.  Here, I’ll start to list out some big-picture items that I think really need to be aired in public as part of any revision of MAC zoning.

Why?  I’m afraid that any discussion of MAC will immediately devolve into tweaking the details, and will lose sight of some very-big-picture issues.  That’s certainly my impression of the Town’s discussion to date, other than Commissioner Majdi’s proposal.  So, to be clear, this posting on revising MAC has nothing to do with building height, or setbacks from the street, or requirements for open space.  It’s about other stuff.

I’ll try to keep it short, but no guarantees.

Continue reading Post #327: Some basic questions to ask before modifying MAC zoning