Category: MAC zoning

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

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.

Post #334: 8/2/2019 meeting of the BAR re Marco Polo/Vienna Market

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

Post #332: UPDATED 8/1/2019: Why I loathe social media/why the Russkis are winning, in one short lesson

This is a set of screen captures from a dialogue that, unfortunately, I entered into last night, on some Facebook page related to Vienna development.  Some entries may be duplicated as I maintained continuity of the screen capture.  Please Google “Neal Rentle” and “Vienna” and see what you come up with.

Just some observations.  If you see someone a) who just joined a group a few hours ago, b) who posts under a name that looks real, but is in fact a false name, who c) refuses to offer any verification that they are in fact a Vienna resident, and d) gets obvious points of fact about Vienna completely wrong, and most tellingly, e) immediately deflects to another point when called out on those incorrect points of fact (a form of the “Gish Gallop“), then f) odds are you are looking at a paid “social media campaign” posting.  Or, possibly, a sock puppet.

Apparently this sort of thing is now part of the game plan.   Do your due diligence, folks, because there really are agents out there, both foreign and domestic.   Caveat emptor. Continue reading Post #332: UPDATED 8/1/2019: Why I loathe social media/why the Russkis are winning, in one short lesson

Post 331: No magic bullets for Maple Avenue traffic

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

Post #329: MAC-related meetings this week: Marco Polo/Vienna Market

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:

 

Post #328: How many assisted-living beds does Vienna need?

Answer:  About 40.  Maybe a few more, because we’re wealthy, and assisted living is something that you have to be fairly wealthy to afford.   Maybe a few less, because our resident population is a little younger than the US average.  But, best guess, if we use assisted living at the US average rate, then 40 assisted living beds would serve the needs of the entire Town of Vienna.

I calculated that back in March, when Sunrise assisted living (proposed for Maple and Center) was a hot topic, but never got around to making that public.  Here, I work through the arithmetic, then just line out the variety of options available for elderly who have various levels of need for assistance.

If you want information on assisted living, in general, in Northern Virginia, see Post #205.

Continue reading Post #328: How many assisted-living beds does Vienna need?

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

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