Category: Town of Vienna, VA

Post #392: BAR final review of Marco Polo/Vienna Market

The first item on the 9/19/2019 Board of Architectural Review meeting was a look at the final plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market development.   You can see them at this location.  This is a quick summary from the Town’s recording, which you may find on the Town’s Legistar/Granicus calendar.

The BAR took about an hour and fifteen minutes to tweak details of the design.    At the end, with a few caveats, the plans were unanimously approved.  My reading of this is that the only major item yet to be resolved is the exact design of the mural on the front of the building.  Presumably, that will be up to the Vienna Public Art (or Arts) Commission.

These three drawings below show the Maple Avenue view of: What the BAR passed originally; what was then handed back to the BAR as having been passed by Town Council (Marco Pologate); and then the final approved plan.

Weirdly, you can see that a ghost of the original building lives on in the final drawing.  The right side of the building, receding into the distance, remains a view of the original building.  (Plausibly, the right side of the left portion of the building, receding into the distance, is also a remnant of the original drawing.)

Here’s a close-up of the building at the left, in the same sequence:  what the BAR passed originally, what was then handed back to the BAR as having been passed by Town Council (Marco Pologate), and then the final plan.

At any rate, barring any other surprises, the bottom picture is what you will see going up over the next year or so, at the site of the former Marco Polo.

If I had to offer an epitaph for this, it would be the following:

A)  Kudos to the BAR for fixing this as best they could.   Just getting rid of the bricked-in windows was worth their review time, in my opinion.

B)  Did the Town learn anything about the review process here?  And is there any plan, by the Town, to change anything about how they go about this? In short, are they going to learn from their mistakes?  Or are they just going to shrug this one off and keep on doing what they are doing?

I have already made the point that there needs to be more communication between these bodies (BAR, PC, and TC) during the review process.  In particular, I called for the chair of each body to pass along a short written summary of the proceedings, to avoid the sort of internal inconsistency that occurred with the Sunrise assisted living review (Post #301).

But in addition, I would say that this whole affair points out the need for some checks and balances within the Town of Vienna government.  At the minimum, somebody in the Town government, outside of the Department of Planning and Zoning, needs to compare the plans between meetings, to see that they do not change between the time one entity approves them, and the next entity gets to review them.  Otherwise, having demonstrated that staff are willing to change the plans quietly between approvals, there’s nothing to stop that from happening again.

 

 

Post #390, (that’s not a) retail vacancy rate

The Town of Vienna is asking Fairfax County for funds from the Fairfax Economic Support Fund.  They’d like Fairfax to pay for half of a $100,000 economic development study for the Town.  A brief presentation on that was given at the 9/17/2019 County Board of Supervisor’s meeting.  You can see the contents of the presentation at this link (.pdf).

The point of the Fairfax Economic Support Fund is to invest in development around the county, where the expected increase in Fairfax County taxes will cover the cost of the investment.  Fairfax County staff appear to judge that this study will boost tax revenues by more than the $100,000 cost.  So they recommended funding it.

For this posting, the purpose of the proposed study does not much matter.  Based on the bullet points, it sounds like this could be merely finding some justification for MAC zoning.  (“Placemaking” is a giveway there.)  But it might actually be a legitimate market analysis.  If so, I’d applaud that, because, better late than never.  It would be good to have some reasoned analysis of (e.g.) how much more retail space Maple Avenue can be expected to absorb, what types of new retailers are likely to enter that market, and so on.

The only point I want to make here is a technical one.  The Vienna proposal is cited as showing a “15% vacancy rate”.  And that is immediately interpreted as a retail vacancy rate on Maple.

First, that’s not a vacancy rate.  Or, at least, it’s not comparable to the way anyone else calculates a vacancy rate.  Vacancy rates — office, retail, or commercial — are always expressed as a percent of the available space.  (Vacant square footage over total square footage.)  The Town’s number, by contrast, appears to be a count of addresses (“spaces”).  The Town counted 138 vacant “spaces”, of which 68 were on Maple.

So, e.g., Giant Food counts as one space.  The Maple Avenue Market would have counted as one space.  Those two would be weighted equally in a simple count of addresses.

Second, it’s not clear that’s a count of retail spaces only.  That matters materially, because office vacancy rates in Fairfax County are quite high (see below).  My guess is that the Town’s records do not show which spaces are retail and which are office, and that in all likelihood, that’s a count of all commercial addresses in Vienna.

Third, that’s not Maple Avenue in isolation.  The overall fraction of addresses that are empty appear to be for the Town as a whole, not for Vienna.  (I can’t know for sure, because there doesn’t seem to be any copy of this study available on-line on either the Vienna or Fairfax County websites).

This is not a criticism of the number.  A quick-and-dirty throw-away number like that , that’s perfectly fine if it gets the Town the money it was seeking.  The Town took its records, counted addresses, and used that as part of its proposal asking Fairfax to cover half the cost of the study.   I doubt, for example, that the Town’s tax records list the square footage of each establishment.

This is a criticism of how that number is being quoted and used.  My only technical point is that you should NOT compare the Town’s number to any published estimate of retail vacancy rates.  Published estimates will be done properly, based on square footage.  The Town’s number, by contrast, equates (e.g.) a tiny shop space with Giant Food.

FWIW, here are some recent (2014) estimates of actual retail and office vacancy rates, prepared by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) using data from CoStar.  The numbers here will vary modestly from other estimates, based on the exact details of how they went about the calculation.

Source:  MWCOG, CoStar.

Finally, also FWIW, if you want to see how I calculated a ground-floor retail vacancy rate for Maple, showing data and methods, see this post.  Those numbers are a little stale at this point, but they still shouldn’t be too far off.  For further background on the mix of retail on Maple, see Post #201 and Post #208.

Post #388: Time management and the 8 PM Town Council meeting start time

One of the oddest parts of the 9/16/2019 Town Council work session was a discussion about changing Town Council meeting times to 7:30 (or perhaps earlier).  I found it odd for several reasons, but mostly because there was so much importance attributed to starting the meetings earlier.  But no mention of any other sort of time management strategy.  (Which, in my opinion, these Town Council meetings desperately need — see the final section of this posting.)

With this Town government, when I see something like that — seemingly irrational behavior, yet with great emphasis — it raises a red flag.  I have no firm answer for what might be driving this.   Critically important to start earlier, no need to discuss any other aspect of time management.  That’s odd, to say the least.  It set off my nonsense detector.

Let me take a closer look.

Vienna Town Council meetings have started at 8 PM for the last half-century.

I couldn’t find records any older than that.  And, fact is, the current Town charter isn’t much older than that.  But I can document an 8 PM start time back to 1966.  Detail follows.

I can check Town Council agendas, on-line, for about the last decade.  That’s on this page on the Town’s website.  And the start time for the earliest meeting recorded there was, in fact, 8 PM.  Spot checking a few dozen meetings between then and now, it seems like 8 PM has been the start time at least since August 2010.

In the press, here’s mention of an 8 PM Town Council meeting (.pdf) from 2003.  Here’s notice of an 8 PM Town Council meeting in 2002, for the creation of the Vienna dog park.

Heck, because Vienna maintains an archive of all the old town newsletters, you can just search that, on this Town of Vienna webpage.  I see from one issue that the January 1981 Town Council meeting began at … 8 PM.

The Town began monthly publication of the newsletter in January 1969.  The February 1969 issue is particularly interesting, not just for the 8 PM start time, but because of this little item:

Source:  Town of Vienna, VA Newsletter, Volume 69-2, February 1969.

So, apparently, the issue of meetings running late is far from a new one.  And half a century ago, the Town tried meeting four times monthly, instead of twice a month.  

In fact, the 8 PM start time was such a standard for us that it’s actually written into Vienna Town statute.  This is from the Town charter, accessible here:  They can resolve to meet at other times, but the default has been 8 PM since (as I read it, at least) 1969 (emphasis mine).  That’s the last time this section appears to have been updated.

The Town Council shall meet in regular session on the first and third Mondays of each month at 8:00 p.m., or at such other times as may be fixed by resolution; provided that at least one regular meeting per month shall be held as required by section 4.2 of the Charter. When the first or third Monday of a month falls on a legal holiday, the council may by motion postpone or advance the regular meeting scheduled for such a holiday, and notice of such postponement or advancement, together with the substitute date selected, shall be published by such means as the council may select.

(Code 1962, app. 3; Code 1969, § 2-14; Ord. of 9-7-1965)

But because the Town newsletter was quarterly (at best) in the earlier years, the first mention of an 8 PM Town Council meeting is the April 1966 newsletter.  Oddly enough, the Town Council of the day was holding a public hearing on rewriting the Town’s zoning ordinance.

Source:  Town of Vienna, VA Newsletter, Volume 66-2, April 1966.

Upshot:  Looks like 8 PM has been the Town Council meeting start time for at least the past 53 years.   More than half a century.

(As an aside, that archive of Town newsletters beats anything that you could put in a time capsule.  Check the March 1961 Town newsletter, when Vienna was seriously considering dissolving the Town (“surrendering the Town charter”) and returning to being just a part of Fairfax County.   The November 1961 issue reminds citizens to pay the poll tax and register to vote.   It’s definitely a slice of history.)

Hmmm

I was going to put in a trite summary of all the public trauma and tragedy we’ve seen since 1966, but I suspect that most of you can fill that in better yourselves.  And throughout that period, Vienna Town Council meetings started at 8 PM.  And nobody saw fit to change that.

And now, after half a century, some Town Council members want the meetings to start earlier.  But introduce no other time management strategies for Town Council meetings.  I can’t quite make that fit together, logically, on its own.

 

Time management strategies for Town Council and other Vienna public meetings.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

I served as staff to a U.S. legislative-branch advisory committee for close to a decade.  I’m going to draw on that experience to suggest a handful of changes, listed in order of my best guess as to time saved.

1  Elocution lessons, or, at least, self-awareness training.

Some members of our elected and appointed boards are good about getting their thoughts together, expressing themselves with a few clear, complete sentences, (subject-verb-object), and then stopping.  But many of them are not.  And those who are not can take up an extraordinary amount of time making even the simplest point.

I am acutely aware of this for two reasons.

First, I have been recording many meetings, often writing up an “index” to what was said.  I have had to listen to some meetings word-for-word.  It’s excruciating.  Not for every speaker, but definitely for some of them.  For some, you just find yourself praying for a full stop — an actual end to what passes for a sentence in their oral presentation.

Second, there’s no saint like a reformed sinner.  One of the low points in my professional career was having to read a literal transcript of what I had said during my public presentations before my committee.  In my mind, I was a model of succinctness.  In fact, my presentations were just so much verbal diarrhea.  A few rounds of that, and eventually it dawns on even the most stubborn person that thinking before you speak is probably a good idea.  And your presentations then use a lot fewer words.

My suggestion is that the Town hire a transcriptionist for a few meetings, and ask Council members to read the literal transcript of what they said in those meetings.  They will be appalled.  I guarantee it.  If they have any sense, just that little bit of feedback will make them think twice about getting to the point, with the fewest words possible.  And this will save considerable meeting time.

2  Add time estimates (i.e., expected start and end times), on the agenda, for individual agenda items.  For major items, couple that with timed opening statements for Town Council members.

And I would add a nominal end time for every meeting, per the agenda, of no later than 11 PM.  Putting estimated times on the meeting agenda, and fitting all the items into that 11 PM deadline (on paper, at least), forces people to understand that time is short.  And for a crowded or disputed agenda, you are forced to realize that you have more on the agenda than can reasonably be discussed in three hours.  You realize you are under time pressure.  It puts some time pressure on the meeting, compared to the present situation where there is no explicit time pressure.  And if running late is the problem, then time pressure is exactly what you want.

Right now, discussion of agenda items proceeds more or less at random.  All the happy stuff (Scouts, sports teams, proclamations) takes however long it takes.  Then, for the business portion of the meeting, the Mayor calls on council members to speak, in turn.  Each member of Town Council speaks, at length, about whatever they want to speak about, relevant to that item.  There is some occasional back-and-forth.  And, in my experience, there typically is little in the way of a defined summary or set of action items, for items tabled for future discussion.  Otherwise, items requiring a vote are then voted on.

That undirected approach may be a pleasant and polite way to do business, but it’s not an efficient way to do business.  For one thing, the same issue will be brought up several different times, by several different Town Council members.  For another, you do not have the full scope of issues relevant to the entire Town Council until after the last Town Council member has spoken.  Finally, Town Council members are under no pressure to make a short, succinct statement of what matters most to them.

An alternative method is to give every Town Council member (say) one minute to state, briefly, their initial position and most significant concerns about the agenda item in question.  Only after that does the individual leading the meeting produce a list that summarizes the N issues that have been brought up.  The meeting leader then walks through those items, summarizing the positions on each item, calling for discussion, and attempting to reach consensus where possible.  This way, discussion only proceeds after the full scope of all relevant issues is on the table, and each item is discussed, all together, at one point in time.

I can already tell you which Town Council members will have no trouble getting to the point in 60 seconds or less (Springsteen).  And which, by contrast, are likely to find this a hardship.

3  Consent agenda.

This item was brought up by Councilman Majdi.  It’s a convenient way to get rid of routine business of the Town Council, rather than take the time to vote individually on each non-controversial item.  All items that all Town Council members believe can be passed without further discussion are packaged into a single item, and (as I understand it) if that item passes unanimously, each individual item is deemed to have passed.

4:  Committee-of-the-whole discussions. 

At some level, I think that working under fairly rigid parliamentary rules makes these meetings last longer when there are major agenda items to be discussed.  Sometimes, to get to the bottom line, what you want is a free flow of ideas.  But instead, what you get is a clean, one-person-at-a-time presentation, because that’s what’s in accordance with Robert’s Rules of Order.

My vague understanding is that at least some legislative bodies can temporarily get around the more rigid restrictions of Robert’s Rules of Order by declaring themselves to be acting as a committee of the whole, and working under an agreed-upon less restrictive set of rules applying to committees.  At the end of which time, they then go into regular session and vote, as the legislative body, not as the committee.

Probably seems nuts to most people, I guess.  But it’s just a legal way to dodge the rigid formalism of the rules for the legislative body (the Town Council), get the discussion done expeditiously, and still take legal votes as the Town Council.

Post #385: Final item on tonight’s agenda: $8M in public works spending, CORRECTED 9/19/2019

Correction added 9/19/2019

Those who attend enough Town Council meetings eventually realize that items at the very end of the agenda rarely get much discussion.  By the time midnight rolls around, nobody wants to prolong the meeting.  And so … I get the feeling that Town staff use that strategically.  What they are looking for, in an end-of-the-agenda item, is a pro-forma rubber stamp from Town Council, with minimal discussion.

So now, when I see a seemingly innocuous item, with a bland and uninformative title, last on the agenda — I make a point of looking closely at it.

Here’s the link to the last item for tonight, titled “Approval of VDOT Revenue Sharing and Transportation Alternatives Resolutions”

Reading that, would you guess that’s how the Town of Vienna is planning to spend a little over $8M in taxpayer money?  Granted, most of it will be Somebody Else’s Money, largely from VDOT and the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.   Most of that money derives, I think, from special transportation taxes on commercial property, and maybe some share of the I-66 tolls.

But even if it’s mostly somebody else’s money, that’s still a lot of money for what otherwise appears to be a little nondescript item at the end of a long agenda.

So let’s look under the hood.

Continue reading Post #385: Final item on tonight’s agenda: $8M in public works spending, CORRECTED 9/19/2019

Post #383: It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future

I’m going to attribute the title of this post to Yogi Berra.  And while my last post was a lament for the things I think the Town ought to ask, this one is my prediction of what they’re actually going to do.

The point of this post is to predict what the zoning will look like for Maple Avenue, once the Town Council’s deliberations are finished five months from now, in February 2020.  (Or at least, scheduled to finish.)  And, by inference, what Maple will look like in the long run.

This post is just a plain statement of what I think we’ll get.  A subsequent post will explain why I think we’re going to get that.

Anyway, let’s face the facts.  Allowing just five months to redo the zoning, within a cumbersome legal and governmental framework, strongly limits what you can do and what you can consider.  Thus, once you’ve set that at the goal, you have a good idea of where this is going to end up.  That’s based on what’s on the table now, recent history, and some understand of the players.

Just as a hint, the original title of my last post was “why I despair”.  So if you expect something chipper and upbeat here, you’ve come to the wrong place.

But first, one more for the obits

I have one more item to add to the obits of the prior post.  Of all the things I could have added to that last posting, but forgot to, I want to mention “produce a drawing of what one whole block of Maple would look like, under MAC redevelopment”.  That came up at one of the recent meetings.  Staff were going to look into doing that.  But some Town Council members didn’t want anyone to do that.  So staff didn’t bother.  And it was forgotten.

The bottom line is that they Town is not going to commission any drawing of what the MAC build-out might look like.  Which is not a surprise, as that is just one more in the list of incredibly reasonable questions the Town might try to answer before plowing ahead.  But won’t.   Most of which I listed in my just-prior “obits” post.

A few pictures of a block-level build-out would be useful, if for no other reason than to see what it will look like when two abutting MAC developments are built  just off the common lot line, as the law allows.  But it’s obvious by now that this request — “may we please have even one image of what Maple might look like” — ain’t gonna happen.

As an economist, I believe in “revealed preference”.  That is, what you do reveals what you actually prefer.   So in this case, I infer that Town Council would rather buy a pig in a poke than let anyone have any image whatsoever of what they are actually voting for.  Fully admitting that (see post title), I just shake my head about that whenever I think about it.  The full extent of our forward-looking planning is going to be, more or less, “oh, just surprise us.”

So, because we won’t hire a professional to try to give you a picture of the future, I figure, what the hey, I might as well give it a shot — let me tell you what I think we’re going to get, to be decided by our Town staff Council over the next five months.  Let me first outline what, then why.

Continue reading Post #383: It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future

Post #382: An obituary for questions that will not be answered.

How is the Town going about rewriting its zoning laws, including MAC zoning?  Is this process likely to have a good outcome?

I’ve written four throwaway pieces on issues that I thought needed to be addressed as the Town moves forward on Maple Avenue redevelopment.  But at this point, I fully realize that I’m just talking to myself.  The Town is scheduled to rewrite its entire commercial zoning code, including MAC, finishing about five months from now, in February 2020.  So, more-or-less none of what I’m going to write below is going to be addressed.  That said, I’m going to roll up everything of value from the prior posts, listed below.  And then, at that point, I don’t think I have anything left to say.

  • Post #304, Where do we go from here, Part I.
  • Post #306, Where do we go from here, Part II, Falls Church
  • Post #322:  Moving forward (where do we go from here, Part 3).
  • Post #327:  Some basic questions to ask before modifying MAC zoning.

In effect, this posting is my obituary for all the questions that aren’t going to be answered, and all the things that aren’t going to be done.  As the Town proceeds to rewrite its entire commercial zoning code.

Now, that’s kind of a cheap shot — “Here’s what needs to be asked” — except for the fact that I’ve already given my best answer for what to do.  That answer aimed to address what I measured or perceive to be the main concerns of Vienna citizens.  As outlines in Post 322 above, my solution would be:

  1. Three story buildings.
  2. True open space requirements.
  3. Concrete, quantifiable changes to offset increased traffic.

Great.  Opinions are like bellybuttons, as the clean version of that phrase goes.   Or maybe, “that and $0.50 will get you a phone call.”   It’s great to toss out some sketchy off-the-cuff answer.  But the real questions are, what is the Town government capable of doing?  And then, what is the Town actually going to do? Continue reading Post #382: An obituary for questions that will not be answered.

Post #377: Rental scooters, the Town begins to get ready.

For background on the rental scooter issue, see these posts:  Post #338, Post #330.

In a nutshell, due to a change in Commonwealth law, the Town needs to have some sort of program in place to regulate the use of rental scooters and bikes.  If not, then on 1/1/2020, the rental and use of such devices is deemed legal, including, if not explicitly barred, use on the sidewalk.  We probably don’t want that, based on the problems reported in cities that underwent unregulated use of rental “shared mobility devices” (see examples in Post #289).

The Town will begin discussion of this issue at the 9/9/2019 Town Council work session.  You can find the relevant meeting materials on this web page.

To cut to the chase:  My best guess is that the Town is developing a pro-forma way to satisfy Virginia statute.  We may or may not attract any dockless scooter or ebike rental operators to Vienna.

Continue reading Post #377: Rental scooters, the Town begins to get ready.

Post #376: MAC-related public meetings this week.

There is one public meetings this week relevant to MAC zoning.

Monday, 9/9/2019 at 7:30 PM in Town Hall, the first item in the Town Council work session will be discussion of changing the proffers for the recently approved 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, corner of Wade Hampton and Maple) to allow the building to be used for some other purpose.     

The meeting materials for that portion of the meeting are here:

https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4124947&GUID=48E2E0E1-5C96-4D8E-8F20-7356781D9682&Options=&Search=

You can see my guesses as to what’s going on in Post #375.

At that meeting, they will also discuss draft changes to the commercial zoning and MAC zoning codes.  Materials for that are given here:

https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4124946&GUID=E124EC89-7A23-4EE3-A207-328A8712F4AA&Options=&Search=

 

Post #374: Behavioral modification for Maple Avenue traffic

 

(Photograph taken from the website of the Ohio Department of Transportation).

The gist of this post is the following:  Maybe we could reduce some of the peak-period congestion on Maple by changing driving behavior.  First, maybe  dynamic messaging signs could “push” the message to drivers that they might be better off going around Vienna rather than going through it, under certain traffic conditions.   Second, possibly, through use of traffic cams and dedicated smart phone apps, we could “push” a message to Town residents to avoid doing their shopping during peak weekend traffic periods.

This is such an oddball idea, and one with so little available data, and so little prior discussion that I have seen, that I’m just going to describe what I mean, and leave it at that for now.  Obviously, that Town would have to make the investment to implement either of these.

Continue reading Post #374: Behavioral modification for Maple Avenue traffic