Category: MAC zoning

Last night, the Town Council had (what turns out to be) just the second part of its public hearing on the proposed 380 Maple West development (39 condos plus retail, corner of Wade Hampton and Maple.   The audience more-or-less filled Town Council chambers.  Town Council took public comment, and had a bit of discussion, but that was about all.   They’ll have yet a third session of the public hearing on this on June 3.  Read below to understand why that third session of  the public hearing has nothing to do with wanting to hear from the public.

As usual, my recording and Excel “index” file are posted at this link on Google Drive.  Look for the .mp3 and .xls files “2019-05-13 Town Council …”.  Use the index to find passages you want to listen to, then go to the indicated offset in the audio file to listen to them.  The Town will eventually post the video for this, which you should be able to find via the link that says “video” on the Town’s website home page.

My overall impression:  Based on the near-silence from the pro-MAC Town Council members, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that this one is marching toward being passed.  As it turns out, the Town did not follow required legal processes, there’s going to have to be a third session of the public hearing so they can pretend to have followed the law, the written proffers were missing and/or handed to the Mayor at the last minute, the depiction of truck access was wrong for the third or fourth time,  the whole undergrounding-the-utilities-thing is still up in the air, there’s a basic misunderstanding about what counts as “pervious surface”, and so on.

To me, all of this sloppiness seems consistent with the actual decisionmaking:  The pro-MAC Town Council members are going to vote for this under any circumstances.  So it doesn’t really matter whether they’ve followed the law, or what state the application is in.  Or that two of the “yes” votes are lame ducks — something which Fairfax County explicitly bars in its deliberations.  The only thing they can’t be sloppy about is the timing of the vote.  They have to have that occur before the new Town Council members are seated.  And it certainly appears that they are doing everything to ensure that happens.

So, in terms of what matters — getting it done before the new Town Council members are seated — this process is tight as as drum.  In terms of everything else, not so much.

Detail will follow.  I will be adding to this throughout the day.

Continue reading Post #274: The 5/13/2019 Town Council meeting — updated 5:30 PM 5/14/2019

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.

Continue reading Post #267: Note a slight change of plans: I’m going to take back your “Small Town Vienna” sign. Please.

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:

1. If the Town turned a project down, the developer would have to sue to overturn that.
2. Courts are reluctant to overturn legislative decisions as “arbitrary and capricious”.  The presumption is that such decisions are reasonable, and it’s up to the developer to prove otherwise.
3. Because this works via lawsuit, the Town does not, in fact, have to state why they turned a development down.  That would only have to come out in any subsequent lawsuit.
4. The Marco Polo developer did not sue — which suggests he didn’t have much of a chance of winning.
5. Because the “statement of purpose and intent” is in the law, and developers are aware of that, the Town can, in fact, point out the ways in which a building fails to meet that “statement of purpose and intent” as a way of saying that their decision was not “arbitrary and capricious”.

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.

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