Category: MAC zoning

Post #309: The July 1 2019 Town Council meeting

This is just a notice to bring something to your attention:  The Town Council is going to consider a motion to rescind its recent approval of 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Wade Hampton and Maple).  This will be the last agenda item at its 8 PM July 1 meeting.

You can find the relevant meeting materials on this web page.

I’m not going to opine on the legal issues behind this, but I will comment on the context arising from the recent Town of Vienna elections.  Mainly, this is not unexpected.

In Fairfax County, they (typically) do not let the Board of Supervisors make land use decisions between the election and the seating of the new Board.  In other words, they don’t allow lame-duck Board members to decide land use (zoning and rezoning) issues as they are going out of office.

They do this for several good reasons.  Probably the most important is that you don’t want individuals who are not beholden to the electorate making these significant (and permanent) decisions about land use.  In particular, you don’t want to allow them the opportunity to make one last grand gesture in favor of any one particular development or policy without having to face the consequences for such an action.

This May’s Town election replaced two pro-MAC Council members with two new anti-MAC newcomers.  In round numbers, 75% of the votes cast in that election were for anti-MAC candidates.

And, unsurprisingly, given what appeared to be a fairly strong mandate from the voters, Councilman Springsteen asked the Town to abide by the same rule that Fairfax County does.  He asked that land-use decisions be deferred until the new Town Council could be seated.  He asked that the lame-duck Town Council not engage in that business.

He was ignored.  At the last Town Council meeting, the Town Council a) approved 380 Maple West, b) turned down the Sunrise assisted living facility at  and c) appointed and re-appointed various pro-MAC actors to Town Boards and Commissions (e.g., Planning Commission).

But, as it turns out, government bodies can change their minds.  They can rescind something that they recently passed, according to Robert’s Rules of Order.

Somehow, given the hustle-up and hardball style that the pro-MAC forces have used to move these projects through the system, I doubt that they’ll allow this motion to rescind to be considered.  From what I hear, the pro-MAC Councilmembers that remain are still in denial about the recent election.  They continue to maintain that the “real” Vienna is solidly behind them. (Without evidence or analysis, but what else is new.)  So it will take another election to settle that point one way or the other.  In any case, there’s been zero indication of any willingness to accede gracefully to the apparent will of the people.  All I can say is, what happens Monday night will be remembered, and I for one will try to make sure it is clearly remembered for the next Town of Vienna election.

Post #306, Where do we go from here, part 2: Falls Church

Falls Church was mentioned at one of the Town’s joint work sessions on changing MAC.  The context was that Falls Church uses a completely different zoning mechanism for their mixed-use developments.  So  I thought it might be worthwhile to sketch out how Falls Church goes about it, and contrast that to the Town of Vienna MAC zoning.

I don’t claim to understand zoning in full detail.  So, in the main, you’re getting an economist’s view of the different approaches taken by Vienna and Falls Church.  And, to be clear, this isn’t an endorsement of what Falls Church is doing, it’s just a summary of a different approach used by a nearby City.

In a nutshell:  Vienna tells developers exactly what they are allowed to do, in a set of explicit zoning rules.  Falls Church, by contrast, tells developers what Falls Church wants to get out of redevelopment, in a free-form exception to the zoning rules.  I believe that difference gives Falls Church a much better bargaining position vis-a-vis developers.

Continue reading Post #306, Where do we go from here, part 2: Falls Church

Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance

I send out an email, once a week to inform people of MAC-related public meetings in the Town of Vienna.  It’s not as easy as you might think, because the Town tends to be … sloppy … about keeping citizens informed.  In this post, I’m going to walk through this week’s calendar and point out a few things.

First, a summary: 

Number of public meetings:  4

Meetings with agenda posted:  1

Meetings with reliably-available recordings:  2

Continue reading Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance

Post #302: Taking the measure of Mosaic

At this point, we have a little breather from MAC.  Assuming that the moratorium on new MAC applications is not extended, we have a little less than five months to think about where we now stand, and where this is all heading.   If that moratorium is extended — something I will argue for at length — then we have longer.

Now is the time to look back, separate fact from fantasy, and try to evaluate the proposed redevelopment of Vienna’s Maple Avenue commercial district in a more realistic light.

First, though, I think it’s worth studying (what most would agree is) a local success story — the Merrifield Mosaic District.  Maybe try to learn a few lessons from that.   For now, the only lesson I’m going to look at is a geometry lesson.

Continue reading Post #302: Taking the measure of Mosaic

Post #301: The 6/17/2019 Town Council meeting

Briefly:

The Town Council approved the 380 Maple West project (37 condos plus retail, Maple and Wade Hampton) by a vote of 5-2 (Majdi and Springsteen voting against).

The same Town Council turned down the Sunrise assisted living facility at Maple and Center by a vote of 3-4 (Majdi, Springsteen, Noble, DiRocco voting against).

I’ll have my usual audio file and index up at this Google Drive location.  Download both files (.mp3 and .xlsx) marked “2019-06-17 …” to get both the audio file and the Excel index showing what was said, when.

Continue reading Post #301: The 6/17/2019 Town Council meeting

Post #300: Let’s change tradition tonight

Tonight, I’m going to have to drag myself to yet one more Town Council meeting on a MAC project.  Really not sure I have the spine for it.

But I can tell you the one thing that, by far, is the most objectionable part of the meetings where they pass judgment on MAC projects:  The pre-vote bloviation.  (If you have somehow managed to live in the DC area and are not familiar with the term, you can see bloviate defined here.)

In the Town of Vienna, the pre-vote blovation apparently is a tradition for such occasions.  Once all the arguments have been made, when everything meaningful has been said, before the vote occurs, they set aside time for each Town Council member to make a little speech.  Typically, it’s some form of C-Y-A, oh-this-is-for-the-greater-good, change-is-hard pap.  Mixed in with the occasional in-your-face remark.  Or the truly bizarre, such as quoting from the preamble of the MAC statute.

And we, the citizens, have no choice but to sit through this self-aggrandizing crap, in order to hear what the vote is.  As if anyone but the Town Council members themselves care what their particular rationale is.

Given that Town Council may have two votes tonight, I suggest that this may be a good time to break with tradition:  Skip the pre-vote bloviation.  It’s a fair bet that Town Council members have already decided how they will vote before the meeting even starts.  So we already know that 99% of what will happen tonight is purely theater.  And that particular theatrical tradition — the pre-vote bloviation — is truly annoying to those whose neighborhoods are affected by these projects.

So, what say we just skip that tonight, and if there is going to be a vote, just vote.  We really don’t need to hear the self-justification.  We just need to hear the vote.