Category: Town of Vienna, VA

This brief note is a return to comparing Maple Avenue to the Mosaic District.  This post is one of those rare ones where I had a genuine “aha” moment.  I finally got a little bit of clarity as to why MAC zoning seems so clueless to me.  It’s a short post, read on to see if you agree, or click to get down to the “aha moment” to get the gist.

Continue reading Post 310: Why no plan?

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.

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

This Friday, 6/14/2019, at 8 AM (yes, AM) in Town Hall, the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) will again examine revised plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market project.   It will be interesting to see how this evolves. I put in a series of drawings below to show how the Church Street view of the building has changed, ending with the drawings to be examined this Friday.

Looking forward, I think the more interesting question is how the BAR’s changes will be enforced.  For the time being, let’s assume the BAR and the builder can agree on a building.  After that, then who, exactly, is in charge of making sure the actual building matches that agreement?  As with the changes in the plans, does the Director of Planning and Zoning have the final say as to whether a building is substantially similar to what was originally agreed upon?

If so — if enforcement is in the hands of the individuals who played a key role in creating this mess — then these BAR meetings take on a tinge of theater of the absurd.  The BAR can demand any degree of architectural sophistication that it deems reasonable.  And then, when it comes time actually to build the building, that can all be erased by the Town bureaucracy.

So, it will be interesting to see what the BAR and the builder can agree to.  It will be more interesting still to see what actually gets built, and whether it bears anything more than a passing resemblance to any agreed-upon building.

Continue reading Post #296: Marco Polo/Vienna Market continues to evolve

This Monday, June 3, the Town Council meeting will have two different public hearings, on two different MAC buildings, in the same meeting. Not only will the Town Council (almost surely) pass the 380 Maple West proposal (39 condos plus retail, corner of Wade Hampton and Maple), they will also take public comment on the Sunrise Assisted Living facility planned for Maple and Center.

Why the rush, you may ask?  Particularly in the context of the shady bait-and-switch that occurred for the Marco Polo project — still unresolved and not subject to any investigation or explanation by the Town.  Particularly in the context of the Chick-fil-A-car-wash, where Town Council apparently just didn’t realize that the drawings provided by the developer did not provide accurate representations of the size and location of the building.

They are in rush because the new Town Council is seated July 1.  Town staff are therefore working diligently to ensure that the Town Council approves these buildings before members-elect Patel and Potter are seated.  Patel and Potter campaigned against the MAC statute as written, and their election takes away the pro-MAC majority that currently dominates Town Council.

Now, if you simply count votes from the last Town Council election, identify Bloch and Hays as the pro-MAC candidates and the others as anti-MAC, you would find that a stunning 73% of votes were cast for the openly anti-MAC candidates, in this year’s Town Council election.

You might think that would give the pro-MAC Town Council members pause?  But that’s not how this has worked.  When challenged or questioned, the pro-MAC Town Council members have simply doubled down on MAC (Post #227).

So, with that as history, then of course, if almost three-quarters of Town voters said “please put a stop to this”, it’s completely predictable that these folks would move full speed ahead.  In Fairfax County, they would not even allow a vote like this during a political transition, because you don’t want lame duck politicians — no longer beholden to the electorate — making important land use decisions.  But in the Town of Vienna, it’s just business as usual.

One of the fascinating things about MAC zoning is just how — ah — malleable the arguments in favor of it seem to be.   You will have to have been following this for a while for the next few paragraphs to make sense.

MAC was all about preserving small town Vienna — until some Town Council members positively repudiated that and called for “small town” to be removed from the statute.

The beautiful “Statement of Purpose and Intent” in the law provided the Town Council with absolute control over what was built.  So that made this vastly preferable to “by right” development, where builders have the right to build anything that meets legal requirements.  Until the Town’s lawyer said, near as I can tell, just a month ago — nope.  The “Statement” was unenforceable, and the Town had to approve any building that met the legal requirements.  (I.e., builders have the right to build anything that meets the legal requirements.  Which is kind of like by-right, isn’t it.  And which begs the question of why the Town Council bothers to vote at all.)

MAC limited buildings to four floors — until five floors was OK, as long as the building had the appearance of four floors.  Or five floors were OK all along, people didn’t understand what “mezzanine” meant.  Or the mezzanine rules only apply to residential mezzanines.  Or something.

Oh, and MAC couldn’t possibly work with anything less than four-story buildings,  because builders could not possibly build three-story buildings profitably.  Until one was proposed — presumably profitably — a block away on Church Street.  And then, out of the blue, Town Staff decided that dropping the height limit to three floors was perfectly acceptable change for a tiny portion of Maple Avenue, under a revised MAC statute.

MAC was about revitalizing Maple Avenue retail — until Town Staff had to propose arbitrary requirements for minimum amounts of retail, because, as it turns out, MAC is all about housing, not retail.  And otherwise builders would build as little retail space as possible.

MAC is about a process that ensures quality buildings by requiring review by three bodies (BAR, PC, TC), and demands the highest architectural standards.  Until somebody on the Town Staff pulled a switcheroo for the Marco Polo developer, and quietly substituted some partial sketches of a vastly cheaper minimalist modern building in place of the stone/red-brick/wrought iron “Georgetown” style building approved by the Board of Architectural Review.  And despite the fact that somebody on Town staff did a heck of a favor that will save the builder millions of dollars, the Town refuses to hold any sort of formal investigation of how that happened.  Just trust them.

If you found all that confusing, let me just sum it up for you.  If you step back from the process, to a pretty good approximation, MAC is about justifying whatever it takes to get the next building approved.  Plus whatever whims or fancies Town Council wishes to impose.

I could go on, but I’m just going to point out one more because, as far as I can tell, we have collective amnesia about this one.  Can you recall the absolutely critical “Community workshops” that the Town held on MAC zoning?  As written up in this post.  Does anyone but me recall the clear statements by our Town leadership that discussion on MAC could not proceed without the critical feedback those workshops would provide?

Now, can you recall how those workshops completely changed the direction MAC took?  You probably can’t because … nothing happened.  Those workshops were held at the end of March.  The Town put .pdf images of the hand-written comments on line.  And, near as I can tell … that’s it.  Nothing happened.  And, as importantly, nobody seems to care that nothing happened, or looks like it will happen, as a consequence of those workshops.

So, to all of the above, we can add that this (structured and frankly biased) community feedback exercise was critical to our thinking about MAC.  (Really, go back and listen to the audio in the post cited just above.)  Until it wasn’t.  And nobody cared.  Heck, besides me, I doubt anybody even remembered.

I’ll repeat here what I said in post #262:

I’m not confused because I’m stupid.  I’m confused because I’m paying attention to what they’re saying

And I record it, and write it down, so I can remember it.  About 90% of what I do on this website is that, period.  And if the results make the pro-MAC Town leadership look a bit inconsistent — that’s only because they are.