The Planning Commission met last week to discuss the proposed Sunrise Assisted Living facility at Maple and Center (and other issues). My initial posting, with link to audio recording, is Post #269. There were a handful of things about the discussion that confused me, and I’d like to bring those to light.
Continue reading Post #273: More detailed followup to the last Planning Commission meeting
Postponed:
This is the meeting where the BAR will hash out the differences between the building they last saw, and some version of the building or buildings approved by the Town Council, as outlined in Post #245: The 4/18/2019 Board of Architectural Review meeting and a few subsequent postings.
This is a brief review of the 5/8/2019 Planning Commission meeting.
There were two items on the agenda: Bear Branch Tavern — a new 250-seat restaurant planned for the first floor of 133 Maple Avenue East (tan office building next to the W&OD trail), and the proposed Sunrise assisted living facility at Maple and Center.
You can find my audio file at this Google Drive location (look for “2019-05-08 …”). The Town’s sound system was acting oddly during most of the meeting so I am not sure how intelligible the recording is. There is no separate index for this recording, but it starts at roughly 8 PM, and I note the times in my writeup here. E.g., something that occurred at 9 PM will show up about one hour into the recording. Continue reading Post #269: The 5/8/2019 Planning Commission meeting
Today — the day after the election — starts the period when all the candidates are supposed to go out and pick up their signs. I am going to start picking up the surviving green “Support Small Town Vienna” signs.
You can keep your sign if you want to, but you’ll have to tell me you want to keep it. I (purposefully) allowed people to get signs anonymously, and I did not ask for an email address. I have email addresses for some people who got signs, and I will be emailing them shortly. Otherwise, if you want to KEEP your sign, please enter your name and address in the form below, to let me know that you want to KEEP your sign.
Change of plan. The sign-pick-up crews are already out. They’ll probably get your sign. Let them, and if you sign in below, I’ll bring you back another sign, with new metal legs on.
I WANT TO KEEP MY SIGN!
And if I take your sign, and it turns out that you wanted to keep it, just email me here (savemaple.org@gmail.com) and I will return a sign to you, complete with new metal legs.
This week there there are two Town of Vienna public meetings directly related to MAC zoning. In addition, the Town election is Tuesday.
On Tuesday, 5/7/2019, Town elections will be held in the Community Center. Vote for up to three candidates. Polls are open 6 AM – 7 PM.
You can see who I am voting for, and why, on post #259.
On Wednesday, 5/8/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Planning Commission will continue its public hearing on the Sunrise Assisted Living Facility proposed for the corner of Maple and Center.
Citizens are invited to speak. Please limit your remarks to three minutes per topic. Traditionally, with the Planning Commission, if you spoke at the first part of the public hearing, you may speak again if you speak on a completely different subject. You are asked not to repeat your remarks from the prior session.
Meeting materials can be found on this page:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=673401&GUID=16FFAA09-21C9-424A-AF47-F0EC8B3BBC5C&Options=info&Search=
You can see my suggestion that they just give up on ground floor retail for this one, and get a better building in the process, in post #254.
Of additional interest at this meeting is discussion of a new 250-seat restaurant for the first floor of the Vienna Professional Center (small tan office building just east of the W&OD trail.)
The first time I heard this new restaurant discussed was in the 8/8/2018 Planning Commission meeting, briefly described as part of this post. It’s also worth pointing out that Vienna has more restaurants per capita than any major metropolitan area in the US, as discussed Post #201, and in this follow-up post (#208, about goods versus services retail on Maple Avenue.
On Friday, 5/10/2019, at 8:00 AM (yes, AM), in Town Hall, the Board of Architectural Review will address Vienna Market, the development that was approved for the former Marco Polo site.
Meeting materials can be found on this page, although no plans or documents have been posted as of this writing:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=692198&GUID=8CFC0C88-F6D2-4B9F-8BFD-287EF50540AF&Options=info&Search=
That will be the follow-up to the incident discussed in Post 245 and several subsequent posts. As I understand it, based on the joint work session held last week, the Town’s lawyer called the developer and straightened this out. It will be interesting to see what is presented to the BAR at this meeting.
In my just-prior post, I asked this question:
If the Town cannot turn down a MAC proposal where the builder has "checked all the boxes" (i.e., complies fully with MAC statute), how did the Town turn down the first Marco Polo proposal?
I have now gotten an answer that makes sense, and it affects not just this question, but also whether or not the “statement of purpose and intent” has any use. (And finally, whether it’s a really bad idea to rename it to be just the “preamble”).
Turns out, what the Town’s lawyer has said about checking the boxes and the statement of purpose and intent — that may or may not be true. At least that’s what my expert says.
What I took away from the last few public meetings is that if a building meets all the legal requirements of MAC (“checks all the boxes”), the Town cannot turn it down. And that the “statement of purpose and intent” is unenforceable — it has no legal value.
And so, my question was, how did they turn down the first Marco Polo?
But what my expert tells me is something quite different:
So if my expert is correct, the “statement of purpose and intent” does, in fact, serve an important role in the MAC legislation. It’s not, as I said in my prior post, mere window-dressing. And that kind of strongly suggests not changing the name of that to anything else, such as “preamble”. You need to continue to make it clear that this is the purpose and intent of the law.
By contrast, if the Town’s lawyer is right, then the statement of purpose and intent is mere window-dressing. Call it what you want. Throw it away. Makes no difference.
So I’m back to saying the following. In addition to the 100-day rule, I think the Town needs to have this particular point clarified. By hiring outside experts if necessary.
I mean, it’s fairly important to know whether or not you can turn down a project. In addition to knowing how much time you have to consider whether or not to turn it down. And, from what I can tell, what the Town actually did, with the first Marco Polo, appears to contradict what the Town is now being told it can do.
The huge drawback here, of course, is that if the Town routinely allows buildings that violate the “statement of purpose and intent”, then it’s on shaky ground if it turns one down. Which is exactly what Vienna Citizens for Responsible Development pointed out about the size of 444 Maple West/Tequila Grande.\
This could turn the “new MAC” into an opportunity for a reset in that regard. If the Town materially alters the standards for these buildings, it should be free to disregard past decisions when judging buildings in the future.
So, as I now understand it: If the Town had vigorously adhered to that statement of purpose and intent, it would likely be on safe ground turning down any building that, in its judgment, significantly violated that. But once you’ve established a track record of approving anything, regardless of size or impact, you may be judged “arbitrary and capricious” if you start turning buildings down.
This post is my further reaction to the 5/1/2019 joint work session (Post #261). It is the first of three posts I plan to write on this topic. This one will just state a few questions, all motivated by what I heard from that meeting. You may want to read my just-prior post to make sense of some of the questions.
There’s no particular order here. And there’s no guarantee that these are the right questions. It’s just a set of issues that I woke up today shaking my head over, trying to figure out what the Town thinks it’s doing. I’ll probably add more questions later today as I think of them.
In hindsight, I think I get confused because I listen to every word that is said, at every meeting. And — key point — I write it down. I tape the meeting, and create a detailed index of who said what, when. This forces me to pay attention to everything that everyone in a position of authority says.
Trust me on this, if you did that, you’d be as confused as I am. I don’t think anyone else in Vienna does this, except possibly the Town staffer who drafts up the meeting minutes.
What I mean is, I’m not confused because I’m stupid. I’m confused because I’m paying attention to what they’re saying.
Questions follow:
On 5/1/2019, the Board of Architectural Review, and Planning Commission, and Town Council met in a joint work session to discuss potential changes to MAC zoning. You can find the meeting materials on this page.
The first part of this posting is my overall impression of the meeting. I follow that with a few key findings. Then I list a detailed index to my recording at the bottom of the page.
Continue reading Post #261, review of the 5/1/2019 joint work session
The Town elections are coming up this Tuesday, May 7th. This is a contested race and our polling place may be a little crowded. You probably ought to have a voting plan, that is, a specific time when you are planning to get down to the Community Center and cast your vote. I don’t think that waiting until the last minute will be a good strategy this year.
What follows below-the-line here is something I posted back in February. Things have changed a little since then, but not enough to make me change my vote. The biggest change is that more-or-less everybody is running against the current MAC rules. Now everybody wants to see some changes.
That said, I’m voting for Springsteen and the two Ps: Patel and Potter. If you care to know why, read what I wrote back in February, below the line further down this page.
What do I hope to see change about Town of Vienna government? Mostly, I want to hear a straight story. I don’t want to hear that, somehow, Town staff swapped buildings between review by the BAR and approval by the Town Council (Post #245, Post #253). I don’t want to be told that Vienna has no choice but to complete its rezonings within 100 days, while I can see that nearby towns take up to a year (Post #247). I would like the Town to stop telling us how responsive they are to citizen input, while re-writing the rules mid-stream to favor whatever the developers appear to want (Post #227). I don’t want the Town to sell MAC as preserving small town Vienna, then repudiate that small-town portion of the law. I don’t want them to sell it based on four floors, only to find out that five floors is just fine.
I could go on, but you get the drift. Actual development issues aside, just cutting the crap would be a big improvement.
I’m just going to offer up one more, based on a flyer that landed in my in-box yesterday.
I attend a lot of these meetings, and I cannot count the number of times I have heard Town officials swear that it’s simply not possible to build profitable mixed-use buildings in Vienna with less than four (or is it five?) stories. Simply not economically possible, people who think it can be done are kidding themselves, and so on. All stated as fact.
Then this arrives, below. After all those assurances by various Town officials … the impossible appears to be happening, one block off Maple.
I’m not endorsing this building. I’m not saying I want this building. I’m not saying I like or dislike this building.
But this is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. If three-story mixed use development is possible, then let’s acknowledge that and have a reasoned discussion. Rather than shut down discussion by pre-emptively claiming that it’s impossible.
I guess what I’m saying is, I want people who are a little less bought-into the MAC, and a little more bought-into the facts. Fact is, as I hear it, the Town is completely aware of this building, as they were aware of the failed Mill Street garage.
The original posting follows. Not all the details are correct now, but the conclusion is the same.
About 15 people attended last night’s Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) meeting. The bulk of the meeting dealt with petitions and complaints from several neighborhoods regarding cut-through traffic, speeding, and the need for pedestrian crosswalks. Among the streets discussed were Tazewall, Casmar, and John Marshall.
My main interest was in the Town’s replacement for the Citizen’s Guide to Traffic Calming. You can find the current version — in use since 2002 — on this page on the Town’s website. It outlines the process you would have to go through if you wanted your street to have (e.g.) speed bumps, a pedestrian crosswalk, a flashing pedestrian crosswalk sign, or other traffic safety measures. You can find a draft of the proposed replacement on this page on the Town’s website.
