Coraggio Consulting
City of Fairfax City Council Work Session, Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Place: City Hall, City of Fairfax, Virginia
Length: 4h 07m (video)
Official meeting video (city, Granicus): https://fairfax.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4219
Agenda: https://fairfax.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4219
Minutes: https://fairfax.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4219&doc_id=92033d12-4170-11f0-b7f5-005056a89546

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:15] Good evening. I would like to call the work session of June 3rd, 2025 to order. Before we start our presentations, I would like to recognize Councilmember Anthony Amos. Councilmember Amos. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to ask for consensus that we convene our work session meeting by or before 11 p.m. So, Councilmember Amos has asked for consensus on ending the meeting by or before 11 p.m. Councilmember McQuillan. I second. Councilmember Bates. I agree.

[00:00:51] Councilmember Peterson. Sure. Okay. Councilmember Hardy-Chandlin. Agreed. Councilmember Hall. Well, it's unanimous. We are committed to concluding this meeting by or before 11 p.m. Ms. Clark, what is the first work session for discussion? The first work session item is the Blenheim Boulevard multi-modal improvement project status update Wendy Sanford transportation director will provide the staff presentation thank you good evening mayor members of the City Council the first item on your agenda is an overview of the Blenheim Boulevard project this is a project that has been

[00:01:30] ongoing for many years so there is a lot to cover we will try to move through this as quickly as we can but we also want to make sure we cover all of the important information before I get started let me introduce the team that's up here with me. First, we have Mark Gunn, who is our consultant with RDA. You will be hearing more from Mark in a few minutes. David Summers and Kurt McCullough, our traffic engineer. In terms of the agenda for this evening, I am going to go through the project history and just touch on some of the major milestones. We will discuss the major design features of the project, discuss tree impacts, landscape replacement. We'll go through the right-of-way process, and our attorney is here,

[00:02:08] Brian Lubcomen, to assist in that conversation. We will discuss all of the public engagement that has occurred to date on this project, the placemaking effort, and then we'll go through schedule and next steps. First, with regards to the timeline, I am not going to go through this entire timeline, but I did want to make sure this is part of the presentation and that you can look at this and understand all of the various activities that have happened in this project since its inception. What I will do is hit some of the major milestones.

[00:02:36] So these are all listed in that previous slide that lists all of the milestones, but these are the major milestones that I would like to talk about. And after this, I will go through a set of slides to talk about each one of these in more detail. But first, the 2005 transportation study.

[00:02:52] So this precedes even my time in the city. This was done, we're now 20 years ago. It was at that point, the only highway transportation study looked at many of the same things that we ultimately are doing at this point. That study was shelved and sat and everything was brought back in 2014. And that was brought back with a visioning study. We received money through COG, through their Transportation and Land Use Connections Program, the TLC, to do some visioning and conceptual planning for Oldley Highway. And it really took off where that transportation study in 2005 left

[00:03:27] off. Once there was consensus on that, we moved forward and started the engineering design. And that is when Mark Gunn and his team from RDA came on. This is when the project received funding, and we started design in earnest. That went on until about 2021, when there was approval of the major design features, and we will discuss each one of the design features in more detail in a few minutes. As we move through the design, in 2023, we began a process called placemaking, and this was where this was a partnership with our Parks and Recreation Department. In fact, they led this since they were looking at signage and placemaking for some of their parks.

[00:04:06] So this was in coordination with that effort, but we're specifically focused on sort of branding Blenheim Boulevard. And I'll talk through that a little bit more at the end. Then leading up to 2024, which is when right-of-way acquisition began, and that is where we are now.

[00:04:21] We are almost through with right-of-way acquisition and looking to start construction next year. That is just a brief overview of some of the major milestones. Looking at this in terms of our roadmap where we are, we are at the very end here, step 12. We are in the process of right-of-way acquisition, about to start utility relocation, and the first location will be in front of the high school, and we'll talk about that more in a few minutes.

[00:04:45] I do want to spend a few minutes going back a little bit and talking about that visioning effort that I mentioned that was funded through that COG TLC grant, and this was very high level. When we receive funding from a TLC program, it's usually, they offer design, I'm sorry, planning consultation services, usually in about the $50,000 to $60,000 range, just to give you an idea of the level of effort that this 2015 effort was.

[00:05:10] It was very high level. It was looking at visioning. It was looking at priorities. And so we had a public outreach meeting that you can see was very well attended. And I will just say, in general, all of the engagement meetings that we have had for this project have been very, very well attended.

[00:05:27] Most of them have been held at the Sherwood Center, and you can see this picture, and I have some others as we go forward. There's been a tremendous amount of engagement on this project. Four top priorities that were identified by the public through that engagement process, and this is all also in a summary report.

[00:05:43] It is available on our city website, pedestrian comfort, bicycle comfort, the importance of landscaping buffers, and the importance of having a consistent design. So then, again, as I mentioned, once we started this visioning effort, we then moved into having this be a funded project.

[00:06:02] And so from the outset, we've talked about project goals and design considerations. In this slide, we've presented in almost every presentation that we've given about this project in terms of what the goals are. To provide continuous and consistent multimodal facilities on Oldley Highway, now Blenheim Boulevard, from Old Town Fairfax to Fairfax Circle to improve safety and traffic operations for all and to promote alternative modes of transportation. And in terms of design considerations, to minimize impacts to private properties, to minimize utility relocations, to minimize impacts to trees and other environmental elements, to optimize the project budget, to ensure pedestrian and bicycle connectivity beyond the

[00:06:42] limits of our project, to provide a consistent design wherever possible, and to provide roadway improvements where feasible to improve traffic. So when we look at the design of Oldley Highway as it was then, it really had this accordion effect in terms of the excess right-of-way that was unused. So really the goal of this was to provide all of these goals while using the leftover unused right-of-way that currently exists along the sides of Lennon Boulevard. So at this point

[00:07:18] now, in 2021, we spent a lot of time working through the design. And in November of 2021, the city council approved the major design features. And at this point, I'm going to have Mark Gunn, pick up the presentation and explain the major design features.

[00:07:37] Thank you, Wendy. Yeah, so the major design features that were approved first was the typical section, and the typical section is essentially the cross-section of the roadway, and we'll talk to each of these on the subsequent slides here, but we'll have one lane in each direction, curb and gutter on each side of the road, and on the west side of the road, there'll be a separate two-way bicycle facility along with a separate sidewalk. Throughout the project limits with the exception of Great Oaks Drive, which I'll speak to on a future slide, the existing right and left

[00:08:15] turn lanes that exist on Blenheim Boulevard today will remain. We will be adding several turn lanes in select locations. Those are northbound to Sherwood, southbound to Daniels Run, northbound to Old Post and northbound to Great Oaks Drive. And finally, the final major design feature is the roundabout at Ridge Avenue. Before we go into the details of each of those four major design elements, we did want to touch on several other key decisions that were made over the years with

[00:08:52] regards to the project. And as Wendy mentioned, I've been working personally on this project since 2016. So there's a long history. It's been a very iterative design where we've made adjustments and tweaks in response to all of the public engagement we've done. And so one of the early items that was evaluated was undergrounding utilities throughout the project corridor. And it was determined not to proceed with the underground of utilities due to schedule and costs that would be associated.

[00:09:27] Second was to go with that two-way cycle track that I mentioned in the typical section of the project. That would be instead of a shared-use path, and that was done really to achieve the project goals of having that comfortable area for pedestrians as well as cyclists and all users of the corridor.

[00:09:48] Third, there are areas on the project, one of them is highlighted on this slide adjacent to Old Post, where there are existing property features that encroach out into city right-of-way. Fencing and other items have been established over the years that actually sit on the city property.

[00:10:08] So in those locations, we will be removing those and putting the fences back on the actual property line and then taking advantage of that area to construct all of the facilities that are intended with the project. We will include the one roundabout at Ridge Avenue.

[00:10:27] Through that iterative design process, we did evaluate roundabouts at other locations. There were three that were under serious consideration, but we ended up with the one at Ridge Avenue that was highly supported by the immediately adjacent community.

[00:10:44] I'll touch on the additional turn lanes that I mentioned in the previous slide, but there are additional turn lanes being put in. Those were really done in response to input we got from the community. We did a detailed traffic analysis.

[00:11:01] We looked at where along the corridor we could actually construct a turn lane without encroaching further into the adjacent properties, as well as which of the entrance roads into the communities really demanded the most as far as traffic goes.

[00:11:18] And then the final item we wanted to mention is the removal of the sidewalk along Blenheim Boulevard from Cornell down to Ridge, basically along the Army-Navy Country Club property. That is an extremely difficult and expensive component of the project.

[00:11:34] It involved a lot of additional utility relocations, and so the decision was made to not include that section of sidewalk in the project. So I'll touch on each of the major items in a bit more detail here.

[00:11:50] The typical section, as you can see, there's a rendering on the top of this slide and a kind of a cross section of the roadway at the bottom. Again, on the east side, there'll be a continuous sidewalk with the exception of that segment from Cornell to Ridge that I mentioned. On the west side, if you're in the road, like I said, there'll be one lane in each direction. There'll be curb and gutter, and then as you work your way from the roadway off the road, there'll be curb and gutter. Then you'll have the two-way cycle

[00:12:25] track, and you'll have the sidewalk with a buffer between the roadway and the bicycle facility, and then a buffer between the bicycle facility and the sidewalk those buffer widths do vary and there are sections where we have constraints where we're able to minimize those buffers but that's generally the typical section and both the bicycle facility and the sidewalk will sit up at the curb level so if you're on the road it'll bump up to the curb height and then extend beyond that and that will be the elevation level where both the bicycle facility

[00:13:03] and the sidewalk will sit and as Wendy mentioned a lot of the corridor as you all know has excess pavement extra wide areas of asphalt what we did with the design was really try to thread the needle as we laid this out and take advantage of extra space that is not needed for this typical section so we'll be removing that accordion effect and having that consistent section from end to end and the two-way cycle track there are a lot of benefits to it as we

[00:13:40] mentioned we did evaluate a shared use path the two-way cycle track really accomplishes the project goals much better than a shared facility would by separating the sidewalk and the two-way bicycle facility it allows different types of users who have different comfort levels to use the facilities safely. The walkers can use the sidewalk and stay out of commingling with the bicycle traffic that likely would be moving at a higher speed. We also have, as

[00:14:17] you can see in these graphics, special treatments and enhanced crossings that will guide all of the users through the different intersections. This next series of slides focuses on those areas where we are adding additional turn lanes to the project. The first is a left turn into Sherwood and along with that it does restrict the the secondary access to the Peace Church to right in right out. It also gives us a really good opportunity to enhance the

[00:14:54] pedestrian crosswalk coming across Blenheim Boulevard from the Sherwood Center. The bottom slide shows two turn lanes that we're adding. One is a left turn into the parking area at Daniel's Run. The second is a left turn into Old Post Road. And particularly at Daniel's Run, what we observed as we were doing our traffic analysis, we were out counting vehicles, counting pedestrians. And what we observed when the crossing guards are operating the entrance

[00:15:28] during school time and they release the Blenheim Boulevard traffic what what often happens is the second or third car that gets released actually wants to go left into Daniel's rut and if that happens then no traffic's moving along Blenheim Boulevard so we found that even though it's a small turn lane providing the ability for several cars to get out of that through traffic should provide a very good benefit during those school times when the crossing guard controls are ongoing Next is the left turn into Great Oaks Drive.

[00:16:05] Today there exists a right turn lane into Great Oaks coming from the circle towards Fairfax High School. And as we were evaluating the traffic and the different design features, we really saw a benefit to repurposing that asphalt area that's out there today.

[00:16:26] So what we're proposing is a left turn into Great Oaks and eliminating the right turn into Great Oaks. The left turn, again, allows traffic to get out of the throughway and really provides a better operation than the right turn on its own.

[00:16:44] And then finally, the roundabout at Ridge Avenue. This improves ingress-egress from Ridge Avenue. There's an issue today with traffic from the shopping center coming up and doing U-turns at Ridge Avenue.

[00:17:00] This is also a very difficult crossing for pedestrians today, and the roundabout with its enhanced crossing features really will improve the crossing for both bicycles and pedestrians. It gives a great space for some gateway features and landscaping as you enter Blenheim Boulevard, and one of the side benefits to a roundabout is that it does naturally discourage higher speeds as you get through this section of the project.

[00:17:35] On the next set of slides, I just wanted to highlight a few features, the multimodal features that have been designed into the project. The first are what we refer to as mobility hubs. We have these at two locations. One will be at the Leighton Hall-Blendon Boulevard intersection, and the second, and on the graphic, sorry, the top graphic is a schematic of what it would look like at Leighton Hall, and the bottom rendering on the right is what we envisioned for the mobility hub at Fairfax High School.

[00:18:08] These will be areas with bus stops, corrals for scooters, the bike share at Layton Hall, really bringing together all of those different modes of transportation at two of the really key areas in the project corridor.

[00:18:25] And I'll go a little quickly through the next couple slides, but we have looked hard at all of the bus stops along the corridor. We have relocated a couple of the bus stops to better serve the communities, but we are providing bus shelters throughout and have really looked at the bus routes and making sure that we're providing the proper coverage for the users.

[00:18:55] Similar to that, we really studied where along the corridor pedestrians are crossing Blenheim Boulevard. There are nine crossing locations. We're going to be using high visibility crosswalks with enhanced pedestrian warning signage.

[00:19:15] We are going to have lighting in the corridor that will also enhance safety. And at key locations, on the bottom of the graphic, highlighted with the red dots, We're going to have the flashing, the rapid flashing beacons at both at the crossing at Sherwood and also at Fairfax High School.

[00:19:36] This is just an example of what those flashing beacon crossings look like, and this graphic is specific to the Fairfax High School crossing. Another feature that we've built into the design, in addition to, as we mentioned, several areas along the corridor where there is extra wide unused pavement there are also several areas where there's vast pavement at some of the crossroad connections at the side road connections

[00:20:11] the view that that you have on the screen here is at old post where there's an extremely wide crossing the rendering below shows what we'll be doing to bring that crossing in by rebuilding rebuilding those curb lines tightening up the crossing and short shortening the crossing distance that approach along with the enhanced pavement markings will really provide for for a safer route for all the different users as i mentioned we we will also have roadway and pedestrian lighting

[00:20:46] throughout the corridor with decorative poles that will also be designed to accommodate the banners to highlight the city events there are four retaining walls throughout the project these are at various locations a small timber wall at one of the adjacent properties the existing retaining wall at Fairfax High School the kind of leaning in poor condition timber wall as you head down towards Ridge Avenue and then a very small wall down at the preserve at Great Oaks each of

[00:21:22] those will be replaced with aesthetic treatments so that we really enhance the look of the corridor next we wanted to discuss trees and we did go through as one of our focuses of all those iterations of design I mentioned we did have a strong emphasis on avoiding trees wherever possible in the corridor so when we look at the the tree removal we do have 271 68 of those are either dead

[00:21:56] or in poor condition and one of our focuses also as we got through the tree preservation plans and the replacement landscape plans was to really maximize what we can replant we've developed a very robust landscape plan that we'll talk about on on the future slides here 50% of the trees that are going to be removed are 12 inches or under so we really emphasize trying to preserve to extent we could the larger trees in the corridor we have an arborist who's been working on our team

[00:22:32] throughout the process we've also worked extensively with anna the the urban forester working with her to make sure that we're implementing all the appropriate tree preservation techniques and saving everything we can throughout the corridor and there are a lot of trees in this corridor in the varying conditions that have been rated by the arborist that are in jeopardy if you will trees such as on the slides here that are sitting on existing slopes there are a lot of overhead utility lines in the corridor that lead to pretty

[00:23:10] severe trimming of trees on occasion and those are all included in the tree impact tables that that we showed there and so as i mentioned a big emphasis also is replanting uh in a robust manner so when we look at those trees that i that i identified as being removed if we look at the good or fair conditioned trees we are exceeding the number that will be replaced so we end up at

[00:23:42] at 114 of the trees in good or fair condition and as i mentioned we've gone through a lot of effort with specific tree preservation measures that will be implemented during construction to ensure the trees we intend to save actually do are preserved one of the areas probably the most significant area of tree removal is along the frontage of Fairfax high school basically the area between the parking in front of the high school and Blenheim Boulevard the majority of

[00:24:20] those trees are are going to be removed what we're doing there is well and we have developed a comprehensive landscape plan for the high school area that we have shared with them along with the other enhancements that we're planning for the frontage of the high school including the outdoor classroom seating areas but what the what the project does along Fairfax High School is it actually pushes the utility lines back further from Blenheim Boulevard and further down the hill

[00:24:57] towards the parking area. What that enables us to do is plant larger canopy trees up adjacent to the road and smaller ornamental trees back closer to where the utilities will be. The intent there being that the larger trees planted up closer to the road are not subject to the trimming that the existing trees are out there today. And this is a graphic of the plan for that frontage area along Fairfax High School. What you see on this graphic, there are the tree symbols. It's probably very

[00:25:34] difficult to see for you here, but there's the tree symbols with the Xs which identify the trees to be removed. The green circles are the replacement plantings that would be done, including the larger canopy trees up along the road in between the two-way cycle track and the roadway itself. We also have a visual up there of what we plan for the outdoor seating area to look like, and there are also a couple of other smaller seating areas where there could be benches

[00:26:06] and other places to sit. This next set of slides, I don't think we intend to go through too much detail these are just views of the landscape plan at various sections of the project and we have not only at Fairfax High School prepared a very robust plan but throughout the entire corridor we've really taken advantage of every place we can to really put in some very nice plantings also wanted to touch on obviously one of the key sites along the corridor is historic blenum as

[00:26:44] part of our design process we did go through we had a specialty consultant dovetail cultural resources who performed our cultural resource work they did a phase two sorry phase one is the first step where they do a screening of the corridor obviously Blenheim is the most sensitive site we did coordinate extensively with city staff and DHR we then followed that up with a phase two or intense level study of different historic or potentially historic sites

[00:27:20] along the corridor and all of our findings of no adverse effect were accepted and agreed with DHR one of the items I did want to highlight on Blenheim is one of the requirements that is going to be built into the construction contract is that we are going to have a cultural resource expert monitoring any construction along the Blenheim frontage to make sure if there's anything unexpected, they can immediately be addressed.

[00:27:54] And we did, working closely with the city staff, we did adjust the design through one of those design iterations to shift the project essentially away from Blenheim and really minimize the impacts to the site.

[00:28:15] And you can see as you get to the right side of the screen, which is the north side of the entrance, just to help visualize, you can see where in the photo there where the existing fence is.

[00:28:33] And you can see that the work is outside on the roadside of the fence. So that gets us through right-of-way in easement acquisition. And, again, one of our primary focuses on the project as we worked through the design was to minimize impacts to private property.

[00:28:56] And where we had a decision to make on some of the design features, first option is always do it within existing city right-of-way. second option was to have impacts or features constructed on city or publicly owned property only then would we look at impacts that that would affect private property so throughout the entire corridor we do need right-of-way and or easements from 36 properties seven of those are publicly owned properties the two city-owned properties two school board

[00:29:35] and one fairfax county property at willard as far as the 29 privately owned properties go nine only require temporary easements for grading and construction of the road 12 others require a minor amount of right-of-way for sidewalk construction along with temporary easements there are two that only require easements for utilities and then there are others that do need more significant acquisitions to, for example, to replace or modify the retaining walls that I mentioned, and there is a graphic here that I want to just spend a little bit of time

[00:30:15] on. This gives a pretty representative graphic of what one of these relatively minor impacts would be, and so when we look at this graphic, when we look at this graphic, this is an an aerial view the road is at the top and the first thing to to zoom in on or highlight would be the existing right-of-way line and property lines and those are highlighted in pink and for

[00:30:51] purposes of this discussion i i'd like to focus in on that middle property that has the driveway on it so what we see there is the pink line is existing right-of-way the red line is proposed right-of-way and so what's occurring at the frontage of this property is we're creating a small bump out and then reconstructing the driveway tying into the existing driveway we're providing those bump outs so that the the

[00:31:24] homeowners or any services be it mail trash delivery folks they can actually pull just out of the travel way do their service and then pull back out onto to Blenheim Boulevard. So as you work your way into the property, we've got the five foot sidewalk and that is what drives the need for the right of way. The right of way, the sidewalk needs to be within city right of way to allow for proper future maintenance. The green shading, if we move now

[00:32:00] beyond that red right of way line, the green shading is the limit of potential disturbance. So from the right-of-way, there's a green-shaded area, which is where we expect disturbance by the contractor as they're reconnecting the driveway and building the sidewalk.

[00:32:21] Out beyond that, just a few feet beyond that, is where we establish the orange line, which is the temporary construction easement. And the best way to think about a temporary construction easement is the project is essentially renting that property in order to build the project.

[00:32:40] the city when the project is complete the city no longer has rights to use that area it gets restored and then those easements basically go away at the end of the project so on this property in particular that we're looking at the temporary easement would be used only for the time it takes to to make that driveway connection to build the sidewalk to tie out any slopes to the existing grade. And so the only area that would permanently be acquired from the property owner is the area

[00:33:16] within the red, in between the red and pink, the existing right-of-way and the proposed right-of-way. At this point, I'm going to just discuss briefly the right-of-way acquisition process and how this works. So Mark was explaining that there are different types of easements that we need from various property owners. For all of this, the temporary easements and the permanent easements, The first step when we initiate right-of-way is that we pull title reports.

[00:33:50] We identify all of the land rights that already exist. And then we perform an appraisal on that property to determine what is the value of that. Now, for a temporary easement, it's a percentage of a value because we'll only be using it during the time of construction.

[00:34:07] And then for the permanent easements, it's a higher percentage because this is something that would be then utilized permanently. So there's an inspection, there's a preparation of the appraisal of evaluation, and then there's the preparation of an offer package. Those offer packages are then sent to the property owners.

[00:34:23] There are negotiations, and we've been working. RDA has been handling all of the negotiations on behalf of the city. We typically have our consultants do the right-of-way acquisition. We meet with them every single week to talk through the status of these, but they have agents that are working directly with the property owners.

[00:34:41] I just want to point out and just pause for a moment that prior to all of this happening, Mark, Sonny, and I met with every property owner who we needed to purchase right away from prior to this even occurring. So before they received an offer, we had already gone out there.

[00:34:57] Each property owner had received a graphic of their property and what was expected that we would be needing. So none of this was a surprise. There were discussions. We had measured things out, put flags in yards. So all of that had been discussed personally. We had sent out letters and set up 30-minute appointments and we literally spent a few days walking up and down Blenheim meeting with property owners.

[00:35:18] And most took us up on the offer and met with us. There were only a couple that we did not. But then when negotiations happen, that is happening with the RDA team and with their right-of-way agents. Typically, we're able to settle, and that means that we're able to come to an agreement on the amount of money that is paid for right-of-way.

[00:35:39] In some cases, we're not able to reach settlement, or the property owner even asked us to go ahead and do that. In some cases, there's unusual circumstances where there's HOAs and there's multiple people that need to sign. They say sometimes, please just go ahead and file those certificates of take, and then we can, just so that we can go ahead and clear the right-of-way.

[00:36:00] And so where we are is that in August of 2024, VDOT gave us the approval to go ahead and start right-of-way. What that means is that in that time frame, we began to perform the appraisals and put out offer packages. Since November of 2024, up till right now, we have been working through with all of these property owners.

[00:36:24] And again, there are a number of property owners to work with. And again, it's not a lot of right-of-way. It slivers all up and down the corridor. Thus far, as of today, we have, of the 29 offer packages, there have been agreements have been reached on 20 of them. There are nine that potentially require a certificate of take.

[00:36:44] What that means is that the city would ask, we would ask first from the city council authorization to file our certificate of take. And we will be coming to you, we're planning to come to you in June to ask you for that approval to file our certificate of take. That does not mean that we actually do that at that time. That's just giving you, that's just giving us the approval to do so.

[00:37:06] In the meantime, we continue to work with these landowners and hope to reach settlement. But we do at some point draw the line and say we need to move on with the project because we have some deadlines to keep in terms of moving utilities and moving forward with the project.

[00:37:21] Our hope is to get that number nine down much lower. We already have a couple that have actually asked us to go ahead and do this just for the ease of the process. At this point, I will pass it back to Mark for utilities.

[00:37:38] So we do have a number of utilities that need to be relocated on the project, five actually Verizon, Dominion Energy, Washington Gas, Cox Communications, and Fairfax Water.

[00:37:54] One of our big goals on the project also was to minimize the relocations of the overhead utilities, and we were very successful in that. the bulk of the overhead utilities that need to move are from Fairfax High School down about midway down to Ridge Avenue. One of the reasons we wanted to keep as many utilities in place as possible is because as soon as you start moving utility poles and overhead power lines, that then

[00:38:29] leads to more tree removal. So the more areas we were able to leave the overhead lines in place, the better for the project we do the the first utility that would be moving that that would be seen out there is dominion energy they are scheduled to move the utilities along the frontage of fairfax high school this summer after school lets out okay and i'm going to discuss the public engagement that's happened so i'm going back all the way back to out back to the beginning

[00:39:05] of the project in 2015 as i mentioned we had a lot of concept planning that occurred as part of that TLC project. There was a stakeholder advisory committee that was set up, and I'll discuss that more in a moment. In 2021, there was an open house. 2021, also, there was a presentation to the school board. As I mentioned, we had individual property owner meetings. There's been presentations to the Country Club Hill Civic Association. In June, there was a public hearing, and there have been 15 city council agenda items. And again, all of these key touch points are mentioned in that very first slide in the presentation that goes through all of the engagement on this project.

[00:39:45] In terms of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee, the members of the committee are listed on the right side of the screen. There was someone from every civic association or property along the corridor was included in the Stakeholder Advisory Committee. So there were 18 representatives from various stakeholder groups. We had four meetings and a walking tour of the project, and the photo at the bottom shows the walking tour of the project. We also had another engagement open house at Blenheim. We had about 170 plus attendees and this was sort of the end of the pandemic and

[00:40:21] I remember that we had a counter because we didn't want any more than 50 people in the room at a time and so we were actually staggering people coming into the room. We made sure we had 50, we paused, we let people circulate and come around but you can see that it was very full room and we summarized all of the comments we received, responded to all of them. We have lots of spreadsheets that show all of the comments. And as we've talked about, there's been a lot of engagement and there's been a lot of revisions to the plans over the years in response to the comments that we've received. As I also mentioned, we had property owner meetings. These were in the spring of 2022. We met with 31 property

[00:40:58] owners on site. Each property owner was given an exhibit like what's shown on the screen here that showed their property and what the expected impacts were going to be. They have changed slightly in some cases because that was in 2022. And where possible, we were able to minimize and also change them based on conversations with these property owners to say, hey, can we do this? Can we do that? And so we were able to update our exhibits because this was before we began right of way acquisition. And then we had our formal public hearing in June of 2023. We received

[00:41:32] comments from 36 community members via engage and then at the public hearing and we have every comment and responses and again the projects were updated the project was then refined even further now I'm going to talk a little bit about the placemaking effort so once we got to about 60 percent design in the project we'd gone through the public hearing working with the parks department we began a placemaking effort we hired the firm and this and I say we this was really the parks department led this, and I was working with them. And so was Mark, since we knew the location of the amenities in the project. But the idea was to identify places along the corridor that could be

[00:42:11] really special places, gathering places, places to, that you could create sort of an experience. And so Civic Brand led this effort, and they were, we asked them to create a placemaking brand for the project. And so there is a whole presentation that was given to the city Council, there might have been two, that discussed this effort and sort of how they were working through the process. And so I'm just showing a couple of the slides from that presentation and looking at sort of some of the inspiration that Civic Brand was using to pull out the colors.

[00:42:44] And they were working in coordination with our already established colors of our Live Life Connected brand. So there was public engagement for this placemaking effort. And you might have seen these. These were sandwich boards that were up and down the corridor that asked how do you want Old Lee Highway as it was then called to look and feel and this was all happening also right around the time of the street renaming and so at that time it was Old Lee Highway and soon after it became Blenheim Boulevard and so actually right after all of the results came in and so ultimately the brand that was created was for Blenheim Boulevard but when we began the effort we knew that the street at that time was Old Lee Highway and so these are

[00:43:21] the surveys that we're going through. And the engagement, there were really visual preference surveys. And so, and these were held, there were two pop-up meetings held. One was at Van Dyke Park on a Saturday morning, and another was in an evening at the Sherwood Community Center.

[00:43:40] And we were asking people, what are your visual preferences for different things like style and look? And you can see signs and brands and features. And we were asking people to say, which one sort of speaks to you the most for this? And we were asking people, what do you feel when you think of the city? What do you think of when you think of Blenheim Boulevard? So we were specifically trying to understand sort of the branding for Blenheim Boulevard. Ultimately, this is the logo that the consultants came up with for Blenheim Boulevard. And what it's showing you is sort of a very simple representation of the boulevard with Old Town Square at the bottom and Fairfax Circle at the top.

[00:44:19] So if you see, the blue square symbolizes Old Town Square, and then the half circle symbolizes Fairfax Circle, and then the connecting street is meant to symbolize Blenheim Boulevard. And so then the consultant gave us some images of how this could be used, and again, these could be on banners on the light poles that are being installed along the roadway.

[00:44:42] So just some more images of what some of the wayfinding might look like, And what we're showing is that as you're heading towards, I'm sorry, as you're heading towards the red, towards Fairfax Circle, the flag at the top will be for the metro station. As you're heading towards Old Town Square, the top flag will be blue to indicate you're heading in the direction of Old Town Square.

[00:45:05] So it's subtle. And we're also looking at the crosswalks across the bike lanes, having that same imagery of the squares and the circles and the blue and the red. And this coordinates also with the park signage that they're developing with that same blue color.

[00:45:21] But the idea is to have Blenheim Boulevard have its own identity. And in the roundabout at Ridge and also at the entrance near the Willard-Sherwood, there'll be a welcome to Blenheim Boulevard signage as you're sort of entering this space. Along with all of this signage and the color scheme, the consultants have recommended the creation of various places.

[00:45:43] Now, these are not being incorporated into this plan. They exist, and they can happen separately, but they were looking at the lion's den in front of the elementary school and doing some other outdoor activities at Van Dyke Park.

[00:46:00] And I can't remember all of the ideas, but there are a lot of really nice sort of placemaking ideas that the Parks Department could implement along the corridor after the project is done. The one that we are really incorporating, though, is that outdoor classroom at Fairfax High School.

[00:46:16] So in that front slope of Fairfax High School, we will be implementing sort of a tiered seating area that can be used as an outdoor classroom, but also as a community gathering space. And we've also been working with the Willard-Sherwood Health Center, and I'll pass this over to Mark.

[00:46:34] There's been a lot of coordination between our team and the utility consultant and the Fairfax County team on this project. - Yeah, so we have had numerous meetings over the past several years with the team developing the Willard-Shorewood Center.

[00:46:52] The projects have been fully coordinated. This rendering actually was a rendering prepared by their team, but if you look closely, you can see that they have incorporated that mobility hub that I described earlier into their rendering and into their design.

[00:47:12] Everything, including the access up into their building has been coordinated with how it will interact with the multimodal facilities that the Blenheim project will be providing. We're continuing to coordinate our construction schedules, and we do need some right-of-way and easements from the Willard property.

[00:47:31] That's scheduled to be approved by the County Board of Supervisors in July of this year. We are almost done. In terms of the upcoming schedule, as I mentioned, we are finishing up right-of-way acquisition and planning to start utility relocation any day.

[00:47:48] This is a very tight schedule to have the utility relocation complete while school is out. That is our goal. And so we are planning to start almost immediately after school gets out to start that utility relocation in front of the high school. We are finishing up design and planning to go to advertisement next summer.

[00:48:06] And we'll be coming to you for a ward of construction in fall 2026 in terms of the the next immediate action We are planning to request Authorization to file those certificates of take on the remaining properties That we have not reached settlement on and that is planned to come to you at your Second June meeting and then the very last thing in terms of construction. I will have mark speak to that Yeah, so the construction contract is going to include a lot of requirements and provisions to make sure we are minimizing disruption to the community and to the facilities along.

[00:48:44] Those will include work along the frontage of all of the schools will be mandated to occur during summertime when school is not in session. We'll also have additional restrictions and requirements to accommodate special events, church activities.

[00:49:01] Work hours will be restricted to the typical right-of-way construction limits and deviations from that, such as night work or weekend work, would require special approval from the city. And we do intend, on a project like this, it's always beneficial to allow the contractor to work in multiple areas on the project concurrently.

[00:49:23] So today, I can't tell you exactly what the sequence will be, which end they will start and finish at, but one of the first things that occurs when they bring the contractor on is they get a detailed schedule developed, and that's when we'd be able to answer specific sequencing questions.

[00:49:41] Okay. In terms of the project estimate, it's approximately $30 million. And in terms of our funding, we have that funding to match. We have done some value engineering along the way. One of the significant things, as Mark mentioned earlier, is removal of that sidewalk along Army-Navy Country Club.

[00:49:57] That was a very expensive component of the project, and it was a stand-alone component that we were able to remove that could be added at a later date, but it was a significant expenditure. That concludes our presentation. I realize it was long, but there is a long history for this project.

[00:50:13] We would be happy to take any questions. I also want to point out that our urban foresters here, our multimodal project manager, our capital project manager, and our city attorney are all here in case you have questions. All right, then. Council Member Amos. I have three quick questions.

[00:50:30] First, I just do want to say, though, the Old Post Road intersection, loving it, looks great, and also loving the placemaking aspect, so thank you for that. My first question, if you could go to slide 32, it was just an example of the right-of-way with one of the private properties.

[00:50:51] So in terms of stormwater mitigation during the construction project, what are we looking at for mitigating concerns with potentially flooding or mud in the roads, things like that? - So we develop a full erosion sediment control plan, including all of the typical measures that would be implemented from, you know, inlet protection, silt fence, super silt fence, and those will control the perimeter of the work, keep that dirty water isolated,

[00:51:27] and not allow it to discharge at all onto private property or into existing drainage systems. one of the measures for that is the inlet protection so if there's an area being graded and there's a rain event before it gets into that existing drainage system there's inlet protection that will filter that sediment out thank you my second question would be considering that Fairfax circle is expected to undergo a redesign was that factored in and how does that connect with traffic calming opportunities so there's a specific reason the project

[00:52:06] ends at Ridge Avenue. And it is because we are uncertain about what is going to happen at Fairfax Circle. And so the project ends there, but we are making sure that the bike facilities merge onto the existing paths that go, one of them goes under the bridge on the north side. And we're making sure that there's a smooth transition. But as redevelopment is occurring, the idea is that we would continue these features into Fairfax Circle.

[00:52:36] And we also have, in the hopper, a bridge rehabilitation project for that particular bridge. Excellent. Thank you. And my last question regarding the outdoor classroom, which also looks great. In terms of maintenance responsibilities, is that FCPS in schools? Is that parks? What are we looking at?

[00:53:08] Microphones. The housekeeping maintenance for that area would be done by the school. Any structural maintenance would be done by the city. So if there's a wall that needs concrete repair or stone needs to be replaced, would be on the city because it's more like an improvement, but tree leaf removal, clean-up, trash and other things, that'll be the school staff. Okay, so we're just responsible for structural, right? Okay. Council Member Hull. I do want to thank you for going out and meeting with the

[00:53:44] residents in person. I think that's a huge step, and if that's something that we're doing for all projects, I think that that's a really great first time to do it and continue to do that, so thank you if I have a few questions on page 13 with the roundabout at Ridge Avenue is it we have so few roundabouts here I'm trying to remember is it common to have pedestrian access both incoming and exiting of a roundabout no that that's a pretty typical treatment where you allow pedestrian crossings on each

[00:54:19] side okay so that is normal yes okay are there any trees that are being removed along the country club property where we considered putting in a sidewalk where those trees their property went on to deal with them so there are some trees and I will have both Anna and Mark speak to this in more detail but there are some trees that will be removed originally the project was was shifted over more towards great oaks and there was going to be impacts to the landscaping there but now that the sidewalk is not going to be there we that is all city right-of-way where those trees are kind of hanging and there's some pictures actually in one of them so we are actually we actually moved the project over

[00:54:58] slightly in that area so those trees are mostly city trees there are some and this is where i'll ask anna to chime in but there are some that are owned by the country club but most of them are on city right-of-way yeah i mean i think you covered it there's only a few that are on country uh the country private yeah yeah private property do we need to remove those trees if we're not doing the sidewalk yes because we shifted the project over towards the country club to so the road itself is going to be kind of where the trees are then or ish ish the idea was that we are now not impacting

[00:55:36] the the front edge of great oaks okay and we're keeping the private property more intact and we're impacting more the public property and those trees also and again i don't want to speak for anna but we had a whole discussion about the trees um and the quality of those trees and their and their longevity. And given that the state that they're in, the expectation was that they were not going to live as long. And so if we had to make a choice of which way to move the road, that it was towards the publicly owned area. And even though we're not building a sidewalk, we are putting curb and

[00:56:12] gutter and storm drainage. So it'll have an impact on the trees from the infrastructure construction. Okay. Is there anything that we can do with that that would somehow help with the property yard, how that water gets down there somehow? I mean, I know it's kind of far away thing, but yeah. Okay. Not at this time. Okay. On page 25, so. What's the page? Sorry. Yeah,

[00:56:49] the outdoor classroom. So Fairfax High School in conjunction with Fairfax County Public Schools is putting in its own outdoor classroom. This is not that. I think that is very important for people to understand that are looking at this and thinking that that's what the school board is doing.

[00:57:07] So the school board is putting their own outdoor classroom kind of behind on the tennis court side. So this is not that. And I say that because it doesn't sound like the school board had a lot of input into this space.

[00:57:26] I think the school board called it an amphitheater and said that it was a city project that was not the school board. That is correct. This is part of the city and it is meant for public use, but it is available obviously for the schools to use as an outdoor classroom if they wish.

[00:57:46] But it is definitely a city amenity, a city feature. Okay, and so is the expectation, it says in here that it can be utilized by the teachers as an outdoor classroom space. is it for private use of the schools during the day when school's in session or anybody can be there and they would need to ask people nicely to move along if they're trying to hold a classroom out there i don't believe that the details have been have been worked out that way because it would be a community space correct so if there the idea is in theory there could be people out there from the public there at the same time that the school is using it i don't know if any use

[00:58:23] agreement has been discussed with and i'm looking at our city attorney about you know restricted hours of use, and that has not been arranged. Okay, I'm just, I will have two kids in high school next year. I'm just, some have some safety concerns and other things about that space in general. Okay, if we can go to page 32, and this might just be specifically as property, it might apply to others, but I'm just thinking as I walk or drive along this road, are any of these houses losing street parking? Are any of these properties losing street parking? How many houses are you

[00:59:00] losing street parking yes they are probably need to get into the plans and get you a definitive answer on that I don't want to misspeak on that okay yeah I can say it's it's it's some I don't know the exact number it's not a lot they're the houses that are in between the end that don't have the side streets so it's some of that sort of the interior houses but we will get you an exact number and we have worked with each one of them we met with them about that about that as well do they have long driveways or little driveways so

[00:59:37] So in a couple of cases, and I would want to clarify with Mark, I believe we're actually extending one person's driveway and giving them a turnaround where they were losing the parking. So we're extending as part of the project to give them a turnaround on their property.

[00:59:54] Okay. Yeah, I would be curious to see that so I can check them out. Thank you. On page 34, when it talks about the certificates of take, and this is just a I don't know the answer to this, if we agree to that, do those homeowners still get paid for what they would have been paid previously had they taken the offer when it was initially provided I'm gonna have mr. love committee answer these questions sure so again the starting point is as Wendy noted is we are very reluctant to do condemnation on private property certainly on residential private property when we do it it's because we're continuing to negotiate but the project timelines require it but we keep negotiating we keep talking

[01:00:34] when you file a certificate of take there's a value associated with it which is based on the appraised value. That amount is available for the property owner to take out. If we reach an agreement that's a higher amount, we pay the delta. So that's how it typically works. The landowner, unless they agree otherwise, will never get less than the appraised value for whatever it is. The other, not nice thing, but the other benefit of a certificate of take is there are rules in terms of how you negotiate right-of-way acquisition when you're not dealing with city money. Once you file a certificate of take, you have flexibility.

[01:01:03] So often in previous projects, as Mr. Summers would say, sometimes we're able to reach agreement where we can plant some additional landscaping or we can do things to sort of ameliorate the effects of the project. So our goal always is, if we file a certificate of take, even though by definition it's an adversarial process, we're trying to keep it as amicable as possible.

[01:01:24] And at least I'm kind of proud of the fact that we have, in the 20 years I've been city attorney, I don't think for a residential property we've had a single condemnation trial. So filing a certificate of take just gets the city the right-of-way it needs, but we continue the negotiations almost as if the certificate hasn't been filed, if that makes sense.

[01:01:43] Yeah, and so I'm thinking of some of the houses that are on Boxwood that have those fences that are right up against the sidewalk. If we take down their fence, a new fence would be erected in that new right-of-way space that you had mentioned before, correct? Same quality, same whatever it is that close to they had previously?

[01:01:59] That is correct, but those are not where we need right-of-way because that's actually city property. Okay, but they still have a fence. Will their fence be replaced if it's not right-of-way there? So the fences are actually in the city property, and we've met with all of them also and have indicated to them that those fences will be coming down, but there will be a new fence going up, moving back towards the city line.

[01:02:20] And there's been conversations about the type of fence with all of those property owners. Okay, thank you. I do just have a couple more questions. So it looks like Vienna is going dark sky, and I was wondering, is the lighting that's being considered here, is that dark sky compliant?

[01:02:42] Yes. Yes, all the new lights that we're putting in in the city are LED and are dark sky compliant. Okay, and that includes all the ones that are then for the gas light replacement? Yeah, every electric light, yes. Okay. I assume the answer is yes, but was there a consideration of doing kind of four-way stop signs instead of doing some of these other options up and down Blenheim to try to control speed?

[01:03:06] - So I will answer this the best I can, and then I will have Mr. McCullough answer this. From since the very beginning of this project, there was a discussion about stop lights or traffic lights, stop signs. And the short answer is that it is not warranted according to traffic engineering principles to stop Blenheim Boulevard traffic.

[01:03:27] And so, and also stop signs are not considered traffic calming. They need to meet a warrant for volume on any of the side streets. The issue is that all of those size streets are sort of equal. There are only a couple that have more traffic, like Old Post, and that's why we're putting in the turn lanes to be able to – and there was a lot of discussion even about having those turn lanes because when you put in a turn lane, it gets traffic out of the main line, so it keeps traffic flowing for better or for worse, right?

[01:03:58] So actually more traffic coming would be to keep the left turners in the main line stopped, right? But there was a lot of discussion about this. And so it was a very protracted, actually, time where we were doing the traffic study to look at if we were going to add left turn lanes in a couple of locations, where would it be?

[01:04:19] And Daniels Run was a clear winner. And it worked out because of the spacing of the roadway to also have it at Old Post because those are right there together. If you're widening, you get the space to also add the left end for Old Post. But, so the short answer is no, stop signs are not warranted on Blenheim Boulevard.

[01:04:39] Okay. Okay. I don't know if, Kurt, if you have anything else to add. Yes. Always stop control is no longer considered a calming measure because in many cases it ends up in higher speeds between the locations where it's used. It's also environmentally unfriendly and causes a lot of noise.

[01:04:59] And that's why there are now federal guidelines on where all-way stop control can actually be used. So just if I'm understanding correctly, we're going to have to get away from four-way stop signs, and we will no longer be installing speed bumps or humps in the city.

[01:05:15] How do we control traffic without putting roundabouts everywhere? The federal guidelines do not require existing locations to be removed. They only apply to new changes. Yes, but, okay, I'll give that some more thought.

[01:05:33] Thank you. Just one last question is just a little bit more about the outreach, and I can't find the slide here, but it looked like there was a more recent meeting with, oh, here it is, June 2022, Presentation to Country Club Hills Civic Association.

[01:05:51] Was Daniels Run Woods also part of that meeting? I don't believe so. I'm trying to remember the meeting. I believe it was at Blenheim, and I presented to, I believe it was just the Country Club Hill Civic Association.

[01:06:07] Okay. I can check to see if the other side of the street was invited, but I believe it was just their civic association. Okay, and I recognize that this has gone back to 2005, but 2022 and 2023, I think as far as outreach and 2020, seem like a very long time ago.

[01:06:27] I think, when it comes to residents' memories and feeling like what's going on here. And I knocked on literally every single door on both sides of those streets in those neighborhoods. And the support was not there largely from the people that I spoke with.

[01:06:45] There are many people who never mentioned it, so I don't know if they were in favor or not. So I'm trying to be transparent in my information. But I'm wondering if maybe a refresher meeting of some sort, and I know we have work sessions like this, but this is a very poorly attended meeting for a typical council these days.

[01:07:02] But I'm just wondering if maybe there should be some additional outreach before we fully commit to that next step that's being asked of council in the coming months. What we would do is when we're gearing up for construction, this is when there would be community meetings to discuss the timelines and what is coming forward for the project.

[01:07:22] That is typical, and our capital project manager would be very engaged in this. This is what Sonny does. He is the one who boots on the ground with our contractor, and we would work with our communications director to get information out about the schedule, the impacts, all of that as we start to gear up for construction.

[01:07:39] But I think there's potentially a step between gearing up for construction and, hey, neighbors, this is what's going to be happening, and are there other opportunities to have a little bit more input, a little bit of conversation, at least just a reminder of what's going on?

[01:07:58] I feel like we get to this 100% step where it seems like we are, but it seems like we kind of linger there for a long time. And, again, memories are short, especially if you're moving in or out of the city. We can certainly, I can certainly work with our communications director to see what might be appropriate to do at this time. There is not a planned other outreach meeting.

[01:08:17] We are heading towards 100% plans on this project and are, again, starting utility relocation. So the project is moving, but I hear you loud and clear about making sure that people are aware because this project has been going on for, we're working on 10 years. So, yes.

[01:08:33] Yes, thank you. I would strongly support additional communication. Thank you. I would like to suggest that since this is a recorded work session, that we could put something in the city scene with a QR code that takes people to this recorded work session with all of these slides and information since that goes to every single household in the city.

[01:08:53] Just an idea. Councilmember Peterson hi thanks the stretch on the west side between Great Oaks and Ridge remind me again what happens there is that bike path but no sidewalk and what tell me about that yeah so that area and and I assume you're referring to the area with the existing timber wall yeah where it gets tight there so yeah basically what we're doing there we're going to be applying

[01:09:31] our same typical section which will be curb and gutter bicycle facility and sidewalk so if you're visualizing it where that existing wall sits will push back further into the property so we'll be removing that existing retaining wall and building a new wall further behind the existing location to create that area we need to construct the bicycle facility and sidewalk and out of curiosity then how wide is the bicycle facility and how wide is the sidewalk it will be a ten

[01:10:10] foot wide bicycle facility and five foot wide sidewalk and when we're in a constrained area like that one along the corridor we do have some flexibility in those buffers that I mentioned between the curb and the bicycle facility and between the bicycle facility and the sidewalk so that's an area that we would narrow down those buffers a bit just due to the constraints and trying to minimize the property impacts. And the reason for having both the bike path and the sidewalk, can you just reiterate that

[01:10:45] as opposed to one that accommodates both? Yeah, so that is one of those major design features where the provision of separated facilities really contributes to a consistent corridor-wide application and also the benefits of that separated facility it just gives all the different users of the facilities a much more comfortable and safe feel out there along the corridor but is that is that a safety provision for pedestrians is that really why the sidewalk is being put in addition to the bike path well I

[01:11:23] think even if you go back to the visioning study that Wendy referred to to one of the high priorities was comfort and safety and we do recognize that we're going to have a very wide variety of users between walkers kids bicyclists of different of different levels and the separated facility really is intended to best accommodate those different users I'll just add mr.

[01:11:55] Peterson that I've been involved with this since 2005 I was with the first study here and what i remember hearing a lot was young families with children and strollers wanting a safe safer environment for their whether their kids are on little kids on a bicycle or they're pushing a stroller they really the separation really appealed to them so i think it was a lot came from the outreach from the community and we did look at putting in a shared use path and what the space requirements would mean and what the tree impact would be and it was a minimal difference because of the requirement on either side of the shared use path for buffers.

[01:12:33] And so it was, and I'd have to go back, but we had a couple of conversations with the city council at that time about this and the decision ultimately was to keep them separate and that was what was adopted in the major design features. Thanks. And then picking up where one project ends and the other starts.

[01:12:54] So this project will end down at the roundabout uh and it doesn't go beyond that at all so what happens beyond that is the fairfax fairfax circle project and so unless and until that happens then the connection to the uh acting trail is its current condition okay and did i understand that there is um i don't know exactly how it was described a bridge uh improvement project uh for that bridge down there yes but basically the the

[01:13:31] The rehabilitation is for the deck of the bridge. So the geometry of the bridge really isn't going to change. We're not widening it or making any changes to the elevation, but we are replacing the wearing surface and the deck due to age and deterioration.

[01:13:50] The underpass, though, I mean, this is an area I'm quite familiar with, so you know about that. Anything going to be done with the underpass? Not as part of the bridge rehabilitation project. And in the long term, would you anticipate when the, maybe this is just too speculative, but with respect to the small, the Fairfax Circle plan, would the connection to the trail be modified at that stage so there would be something different than this underpass that exists right now as your only way on it?

[01:14:21] Potentially. Yeah, I'm sure that could be looked into. I mean, I would just note that's an interesting place to go, particularly in the evenings. And did I hear correctly, I think you referenced when this whole thing got started in 2005, there was a transportation study associated with that.

[01:14:42] And did I hear you say that that was the last time we had such a transportation study? Maybe I didn't hear you correctly on that. It was a study of then Old Lee Highway. And there is a link to the whole study on the project website. But that has not been updated since then?

[01:15:00] It's not a traffic study. It's not a traffic study. It was looking at a lot of the same things that this ended up doing. It was looking at the provision of turn lanes and bicycle facilities. It really had the same focus of what we're doing. We truly picked up where that left off in 2014.

[01:15:17] All right, so it was design-based, it sounds like. It was a design, yes, correct. Okay, and then maps that you provided here, and I'm so sorry I don't have the rest of them up um don't include on the east side the stretch uh from daniels run elementary to the entrance to farcroft can you just remind me is that a sidewalk that's going in there yes and in front of farcroft is there also uh you know near the sidewalk then another path a bike path

[01:15:55] a shared use path that connects with that so every so on that side of the street on the daniels run That is a sidewalk that is being provided. All of the other facilities are being provided on the other side of the street. The reason I ask is an inquiry from somebody who lived there who thought they had seen a map that showed that there would also be, in addition to the sidewalk, another path.

[01:16:16] There's a little pond in there. There's already a little bike path. So it might have just been showing that trail when you head into Farcroft that goes down towards Breckenridge. Yeah. So that might be – I'm not sure I'd have to see it, but that's my guess. Okay, great. I think that's it for the time being.

[01:16:34] Council Member McQuillan. Thank you for that presentation. I just have a few questions. On slide 23 about the trees, the current shade that we have, will that be similar after the replanting?

[01:16:57] I know canopy is one thing, but I don't know how that affects the shade. Is your question for in front of Fairfax Boulevard or Fairfax High School specifically?

[01:17:14] Yeah, we can go there. so in front of Fairfax High School it will be improved but we'll have canopy trees along the street versus right now we do have canopy trees but they're being cut because of the power lines power lines shifting back we won't have to cut them as severely so the shade should improve through that area and then throughout the corridor as we as the tables were showing the planting is replacing all the trees that are in good or fair condition so the the canopy should over time be pretty robust. Of course, again, the power lines through most of the corridor will remain, but we are planting understory trees, so pruning will be less, and so you won't have the

[01:17:54] trees carved out as much as you drive down Blenheim Boulevard. Excellent, thank you. My next question is about the visibility of the walkers, since I could see that with the buffer that we're doing between the bicycle lane part and then the pedestrian part, what kind of visibility will we have from the street to be able to see anybody walking? Yeah, so as part of our design, one of the things that we look at is sight distance for each turning movement to each

[01:18:26] potential conflict. So for example, and that also drives where we select to plant which type of tree or looking at any roadside feature. So we are looking at visibility, for example, if you're a driver leaving the neighborhood, getting out onto Blenheim as you're approaching the crosswalk.

[01:18:51] You've got to see both bicyclists and pedestrians coming from either direction. You also need that visibility if you're making a left or right turn from Blenheim into the neighborhoods. And likewise, we look at site distance for the cyclists who would be using the cycle track in either direction as they're approaching the intersection. So that is a very important part of our design and something that we've gone through as we've advanced the plans.

[01:19:19] Okay, yeah, I noticed that with the crosswalks, how they're across the street so that anyone taking that left turn on the new left turn lane would be able to see those crossing. I'm more concerned about people walking in the evenings, later in the evening time. Will it be easy to see them since I know that there's gonna be two buffers versus one between the pedestrians and the street?

[01:19:40] It will, like I said, we will have clear sight lines in all directions and the other important thing is the lighting that we're going to be providing which will give great visibility to anyone approaching the intersections excellent my next question is regarding slide 25 the outdoor classroom what input did the school board have any input at all in this design we did show it to them and it was part of the the easement acquisition this was discussed with them and i certainly had a conversation with chair pitches both on site and i've had other conversations with her as well

[01:20:16] i did not present this to the school board i don't know if chair pitches did okay um why was this specific location chosen this was one of the the things that civic brand had looked at um and they identified the location because it lined up nicely with the crosswalk from from the school um and because of the grade of the of the slope in that area it would work nicely for that terraced seating. Okay. I, too, have to echo the sentiments of Councilmember Hall. I have a real concern regarding the safety of setting up a stadium, essentially, facing our schools

[01:20:54] for anyone in the public to, you know, sit there and, I mean, it faces directly the front door of our schools. And also, just an alternative note, if it was, I know this wouldn't allow for an outdoor classroom situation, but if the idea was to have children using it, I was just curious if you had thought about having it facing the street where the parade goes by, since people gather there all the time, and I was just curious what other thoughts were provided. So again, the idea was to

[01:21:28] work with the topography of the area there. I think maybe we should not call it an outdoor classroom, even though that's what it says. I would think of this more as sort of a community space that can be used as an outdoor classroom if the schools choose to do that. And I understand that the schools might not want to because of security concerns, but it may be as an after-school club or just a hangout spot. But that was the idea to have a place along the corridor. And so this was something we did discuss with the superintendent of schools and the principal. And so there have been

[01:22:01] conversations about this. And again, we don't have discussions about use agreements, but I do think that if that comes to it, it can certainly happen. But the idea is for it to be a shared community space. Wendy, I can speak a little bit about this.

[01:22:17] Anything on school property is under the control of the school board and the school. So nobody has a right to use that unless if the school wants them, does not want them to be used. The school has first use of it, and the school can restrict use to it because it's on school property.

[01:22:36] So the schools typically have user agreements for the ball fields where the ball fields are a part of the school and used by the school and can be used by community use when the school is not using it after school hours.

[01:22:52] So something like this could be used as scheduled with the school or after hours if there is a community use or something like that. If people want to use it separately, they could, just like they would go on a school property, maybe walk on the track or play tennis however the school would have control of use on their entire property. Thank you for that. I appreciate the explanation I would still be curious to hear a little bit more about that from the school board and then last but not least slide 34 I believe it's slide 34 about the

[01:23:31] right of way acquisitions we have nine still requiring certificate of take how many Have not settled those are the nine nine nine. Okay. I forget what I was gonna ask you about that apologies I think that sums it up. Thank you Councilmember Hall is there a bus stop right outside the high school. I don't recall okay So does that amphitheater line up then no closely the bus stop is down at the intersection with Cornell. Okay, so there's not one on Blenheim

[01:24:07] There no not where the where the the outdoor area is okay. Thank you Council Member Quillen and then Council Member Peterson. Sorry, I was able to understand my chicken scratch here. Of the nine that still require the certificate of take, how many of those will lose their street parking?

[01:24:28] I don't know offhand, but I can let you know. Okay, thank you. The reasons for them vary. Some are the owners out of the country, and we haven't been able to reach them. There's various reasons for the nine. But I don't believe that any refusals are due to that issue, but I will check.

[01:24:46] Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Council Member Peterson. Just to follow up on the right-of-way issue, and if you can't answer this, I understand. But I am curious whether there's any just general sense of the deltas that come out of these situations where we have a certificate of take, and it ultimately gets resolved with a payment above the appraisal.

[01:25:11] Just curious if there's any ballparking on that. I'll make a general comment based on projects in the past. Frequently, the filing of certificates of take has very little to do with the valuation and more with the sort of esoteric elements of the project. So this is what I talked about. We file a certificate, and then we can put extra landscaping in.

[01:25:29] We can do things like that. Our appraisals are quite good. We have very good appraisers that work on the numbers. Often, we're working through issues with property owners' perception of what the value of their property is and the area of the take.

[01:25:46] but as Wendy noted, much of the area that is being taken, or some of the area that's being taken more than some, are temporary easements. And so we're required to compensate for that, but that goes away at the end of the project. So it's a low value and some folks think that those should have higher values.

[01:26:02] It's just something, it's tinkering within the numbers, but our appraisals are quite good. We usually do not pay significantly more than what the appraised values are. - Okay, thank you. Just two more quick questions. One big picture question. I THINK IT'S SLIDE 47, BUT-- 47, YOU SAID?

[01:26:22] 47. JUST THE THIRD ROW DOWN ON THE TABLE, FINAL DESIGN. AND THE BIG QUESTION IS, WHERE ARE WE? ARE WE DONE, DONE? OR ARE THERE STILL SOME TWEAKS GOING ON? WHAT IS THE STATUS AND ETA ON THAT?

[01:26:41] WE ARE PRETTY MUCH DONE, DONE. ONCE YOU ACQUIRE, RIGHT-AWAY. THAT'S WHEN THE FOOTPRINT OF THE PROJECT IS REALLY SET. THERE ARE ALWAYS SORT OF MINOR THINGS THAT WE CAN ADJUST, we're really headed towards final plans yes we're essentially ready to submit 100 plans uh with and what we've been working on recently have been final construction details that need to be included for the project to be ready to bid and it looks like that'll happen this time next year yes because between now and then will be utility relocations which takes can take approximately a year and then

[01:27:19] a super basic question that i think i know the answer to but on the very last line with project construction this is going to be done on some sort of a staggered way to continue to accommodate traffic and all that okay i guess my last question is about trees and we had an inquiry from dr jones and anna i think you were involved in this with george mason university uh who uh is a phd botanist and had a look at the trees um it at fairfax high school and did an assessment of their condition And I think part of his observation,

[01:27:56] which is a general one, whenever we get these assessments of trees done in the city, is that to note that by definition, mature trees almost always, if not always, have some form of disease.

[01:28:11] So to say that a tree has disease is not necessarily a justification for its removal. Some of them, again, maybe by definition all of them have that. So it has to be something else, a higher degree of impairment, and he did some assessment that I think he shared with you. I'm just looking at the rough numbers, and I'm not sure. Was that reconciled so that we have some shared sense of what the condition and status of those trees are?

[01:28:41] Yeah, so for construction plans, condition assessments are based off of a system and rubric from the International Society of Arboriculture. And so in our ordinance, we require an ISA arborist to conduct the inventory. Condition is both considering health as well as structure.

[01:29:03] And so a lot of times a tree might look healthy, but have a structural concern. And so its condition rating is lowered. When it comes to a project like this, you're also thinking about suitability for preservation through construction and so that's outside of the actual tree condition itself and so on this plan the project arborist actually coded the trees not by their condition but by suitability for preservation and it again was a combination of the site conditions the actual

[01:29:41] tree condition of the health and structure and then the species tolerance of what's being proposed for construction. Thanks. And again, did this result in a general agreement in terms of the health and speciation of the trees? Yeah, I mean, I believe that the conditions of the trees were matching up. It was a matter of reconciling, again, that suitability for preservation and comparing it to condition. I think there was a miscommunication in those and how the tables were

[01:30:19] were being displayed. Okay so we've gotten that straightened out. I have not heard back from the the gentleman that. And I do want to thank Dr. Jones for taking his time. He's a resident. He is a renowned expert and he put some time and effort into doing this and is somebody I think who is a tremendous resource for the city as we look into these kinds of issues and assessments. So I do want to thank him for doing that. And thank you also for working with him to try to bring some

[01:30:51] reconciliation to those perspectives. So thanks. Any other comments or questions from the dais? Wonderful. Thank you so much. Very informative. Again, I encourage residents who are interested to pass along the fact that this work session is recorded and resides on our website for anyone interested in learning more about the project. Ms. Clark? Our next work session item is an update on the George Snyder Trail Project. Wendy Sanford, Transportation Director, will provide the staff

[01:31:27] presentation. Actually, I'm going to do at least the first part and then Wendy can supplement as as needed so as you recall on last meeting a week ago part of the work session we were discussing

[01:31:55] the george snyder trail a majority of council asked me to ask bdot to for a third option which would be to build only the western half of the george snyder trail as it's currently designed in a hundred percent approved plans and so we did that so that was on Tuesday last Tuesday on the third last Thursday Wendy and I went over to the NOVA office and we met with Bill Cutler who is who sent us signatory on the letter

[01:32:32] giving us the two two options that we discussed on the 27th and we met with mr. Cutler and his several of his team and discussed that in the letter is in more detail but we're also able to provide context and for example we could show on the on the plans how the even only in the western half there would be connectivity you know something not something that's easily explained in a letter and so it was a good meeting and then yesterday mr. Cutler called me

[01:33:10] and let me know that VDOT is willing to move forward with our request to only build the western half so if you recall I spoke with each of you individually prior to with the exception of council member McQuillan who was under the weather and unavailable but I did I did reach out to her but I was able to speak with the rest of you individually and asking your commitment to vote, if VDOT would give us that option, that you would support that as an option.

[01:33:49] The reason I did that, as I mentioned in the discussion, was to make our case more compelling, that if you give us this option, it's one that we're willing to take, because at the moment we only had two, and neither one seemed to, at least on Tuesday, neither of the two options that they gave us seem to have generated a majority of support from council so we have a verbal response I talked to mr. Cutler for for a bit and and he shared things and then Wendy had a subsequent conversation with his staff

[01:34:26] in more detail and that outlines this schedule that you see on the screen in front of you basically what VDOT is asking in order to proceed with this

[01:34:39] A third option, what I call hybrid, that's my term, hybrid option, meaning we're only going to build the western half, not build the eastern half, is they need a resolution from city council that the city supports this alternative and requests a scope change from CTB and understands that there will be some payback required for the design cost association with the east part of the trail that's not going to be constructed.

[01:35:07] So one of the things that we talked about, and I'm sure a question that will come up from council is, well, how much are we talking about? They will work with us both on determining the amount as well as on a repayment schedule.

[01:35:27] But what they're willing to do is basically come up with a not-to-exceed cost. But I would assume, I think the safe assumption is probably roughly half of the design.

[01:35:45] So the 3.7 is the number. 700 was for right-of-way, so half of the design is one and a half. There was one parcel on the east that we purchased for right-of-way at 150, so that's 1650.

[01:36:02] And the rest of the right-of-way is on the western half, which would be the part that would be constructed if council endorses this option. So that's, you know, again, we haven't gotten to a number yet, but that's probably on the high side what that number might look like.

[01:36:19] The reason we need, the council needs to adopt a resolution, this resolution on June the 10th at your next meeting is because materials are due to the Commonwealth Transportation Board on June 20th.

[01:36:35] So this would still require Commonwealth Transportation Board approval, but Mr. Cutler has had a conversation, so it's been discussed with the VDOT Commissioner, Mr. Britch, it's been discussed with the NVTA, so everybody is in concurrence as far as the recommendation coming from the region will be to support this to CTB.

[01:37:02] So there's a high degree of confidence that the CTB would go along with the staff's recommendation. You see the rest of the bullet points as far as the schedule. So we have to submit to CTB because of their schedule of how they do meetings.

[01:37:21] So this has to get workshopped first, which is on July the 15th, which assumes a positive endorsement of RJAC and MBTA. RJAC is the staff committee that Wendy sits on as a member. And then that's actually on June 26th, NVTA meeting would be on July the 10th.

[01:37:40] And then so we'd have the CTB workshop on the 15th. As council takes the month of August off, so does the CTB. So there's no meeting in August. And then it would be action to endorse the change on September 17th at their meeting, the CTB's meeting.

[01:38:00] And after the 17th, we could advertise the project. Go to the next slide. So VDOT said they'll perform a detailed evaluation of design costs meant to date to determine that exact repayment amount, as I mentioned.

[01:38:17] Our consultant is providing them information that will feed into that analysis, and so it will be a collaborative effort. And they indicated that they will work with us on a repayment plan schedule that works for us.

[01:38:36] We will get a formal response in writing before the end of this week part of why we don't have it yet is because of the previous bullet point which is the That determining that amount our consultant will be giving them information. I believe tomorrow So what we can we expect the actual letter that that basically Affirms what he told me on the phone in our phone conversation we'll mimic or will affirm all of those uh things that i previously mentioned um if you do the next slide

[01:39:15] so um council member hall after i sent this information out to um to to you all about the because again the call just came yesterday um so i know we're on this is like a very fast turnaround she had asked if we could do sort of a side-by-side comparison i know you all were copied on that email um we didn't get that till this afternoon so um not not just because again because of the timing we just you know she just asked we were able to put this together um you know very quickly uh and so certainly a high level of detail but basically as you can see in this chart

[01:39:53] there's the construct the full trail west half only cancel the project so first line is the total project cost the second line is the payback required so if we construct the full trail there's no payback required we construct the west half only as you see it says to tbd to be determined that not to exceed amount likely again like i just mentioned approximately one and a half million for pe 150 for the unused right-of-way that's probably on the high side it might be a little less than that if we were to cancel the project it's the full 3.7 million spent to date

[01:40:32] that would need to be repaid asked about annual maintenance costs these are for things such as asphalt repair debris clearing there's you know there's several bridges invasive removal etc and so these are certainly estimates as you can see for constructing the full trail the first five years it'll be a little less and then it goes up a little for starting year five the west half since it's not as much trail those numbers are less we cancel the project it's not

[01:41:07] zero because there is some existing like with invasives and things with debris removal after storms and stuff so that does happen it's minimal but there is it's not zero so what so the next thing we were showing is is you know a 10-year direct cost to the city you can just using those numbers you can see over 10 years what that what the cost would be again if we are to construct whether we construct the full trail or the west half we're using non-city money to do that

[01:41:41] construction so that's what the direct cost would be for your project timeline the full trail construction of course that would get started quicker if we construct the west half We wouldn't have the approval until September, so then the invitation to bid would be after that and then award, of course, following.

[01:42:05] And then, of course, there is no construction if the project is canceled. We were asked about key benefits and tradeoffs. Obviously, you all have talked about this quite a bit over the last few months, about the impact to there's loss of trees, impact of the forest is certainly a trade-off, but you are getting an ADA accessible trail that's connecting to the rest of our trail network.

[01:42:34] And then some, you know, and then one of the trade-offs, of course, is whether you have to pay back funds or not, depending on which option you choose. And then as far as potential risks, you know, there's always some potential risk. You know, we are doing construction in some environmentally sensitive areas.

[01:42:54] there are some wetlands we'll be working around etc so those are some of the potential risks that that we see doesn't mean it's certainly this isn't certainly again we just put this together I'm certainly not stating that this is an all-inclusive exhaustive list of any of those things there may be others as well but this was we were doing our best to try to respond to council member hall's request um so you could have this information um to discuss here this evening

[01:43:29] and then i think the next is my the final slide which are the next steps again vdot is if we're going to avail ourselves of this option they need us to adopt a resolution on june 10 and then we will forward that resolution after adoption before june 20 to meet the ctb deadline and so that's the information that we have for you this evening again before you know so a week ago it was a binary choice of either build or cancel so now there's an

[01:44:08] opportunity for this hybrid option and they have stated what it will take for us to be able to do the higher what I again hybrids my term West only build they've been so happy to answer any questions that we can and of course you have Wendy and Dave Summers here as well so I think I will start out by addressing the fact that when there was only a binary choice suddenly we started getting a lot of emails from people in this community who decided they supported fully building the trail in the last two weeks that was an

[01:44:47] interesting outcome of saying you only have two choices I don't believe the The staff saw those emails, but mayor and council saw those emails. And suddenly, lots of people whom we all know personally, and their street addresses and their emails were on their letters of support for the full trail, started coming in.

[01:45:05] That was a very interesting thing to happen when there were only two choices. I am surprised that everyone has agreed that building half the trail is an acceptable alternative to an 11-year project that has a lot of staff hours, previous councils, an advisory board, and previous mayors supporting building a trail that connects other trails in northern Virginia regionally.

[01:45:35] This building half a trail dumps this share juice path out in the middle of a residential neighborhood. So the fact that CTB and NVTA and VDOT think that this is a great solution astonishes me.

[01:45:50] It should be great, great news for other jurisdictions in Virginia whose projects are 100% who've changed their minds because look what you can do. So I will now open the floor to questions. Council Member Amos. I only have one question.

[01:46:07] So for the western half option, if the project were expected to go over budget, are we able to reallocate money that was originally going to be for the east side to cover those costs? Our consultant has put together a cost estimate for the west half and what that involves.

[01:46:26] And his estimate for the total project cost, if you go back to here, is about $12 million. I don't know the timing of when we would have to relinquish the remaining money back to the nvta um so i can't answer that question right but vdot did say that give them a cost to just do the west half so we're able to come up with a cost estimate for just the west half and that's what our consultant is working on councilmember hardy chandler so i realized that in this short time

[01:47:03] there wasn't an opportunity and thanks for going back to this slide uh to talk about the non-concrete risks of this um i think you know talking about the specifics to the trail is one thing but there are also some elements of breaking a promise right so can you speak to some of the sort of longer term sort of reputational risks to each of these and again i realize that there was a short short turnaround and not the ability to kind of address some of those bigger sort of long-term

[01:47:38] impacts i'll do my best um as we've said before um you know we've built a a good long-standing relationship with the vdot staff and working on a multitude of projects during the years wendy wendy has been here almost 20 20 years 15 years how long have you well in at least in the region maybe not with the city 20 20 you know in the region but working working with vdot i've worked with vdot for for 30 years although only 10 has been in in the nova region but in terms of

[01:48:17] you know you build those relationships and so you can so to to work these things out so honestly i think the relationship that that that we've developed over the years um certainly played a factor in our meeting in terms of being able to have this as an option um when it wasn't before The fact that we could talk through these things I think is a credit to Wendy and the staff as far as being able to do that.

[01:48:48] Having said that, I think, you know, that if we ask for a third option, so the perception would be because we didn't like the binary choice. So we didn't want to choose based on that.

[01:49:05] We wanted something else to choose. So they've opened the door and given us that opportunity. If we then turn around and don't take that opportunity, I think that will have negative impact on our relationship because we've asked them, we've said that, which is the whole reason I was asked council members, would you commit to doing this as part of that?

[01:49:30] And so they've agreed. I think that the staff here has, you know, they've had to, you know, talk with the commissioner and CTB and other folks. So I think that they've, you know, gone out of their way to help us as well.

[01:49:47] And so, you know, my sense would be that if we had, you know, we've been given this option, we don't take this option. They're going to look at, well, why did you ask if you're not going to take it?

[01:50:02] And I do think there would be, you know, potential – I don't know that I can quantify necessarily what those are, but, I mean, again, you know, these are, you know, longstanding relationships. And you talk about, you know, making a commitment, and we've said this is what – you know, if you give us this opportunity, this is what we're asking for.

[01:50:25] We'd like to take it. So I think that's how – that was the understanding from your discussion. That's what you wanted. So we have been able to successfully get that as an option, and if we don't take it, I do think there will be some negative consequences.

[01:50:43] I'm not sure I can articulate what those would be, but I think there would be. I'd like to just piggyback on that, because I've been doing work for VDOT for at least 30 years, a lot of it on the bridge side before I came here. And I know when Wendy and I talked to Maria and some of the folks at VDOT, they worked very hard to get us this third option back.

[01:51:06] A lot of time on the phone and talking to the other folks in Northern Virginia and Richmond. So I think that our relationship with them, as long as I've been here for 23 years, and the ability for them to grant us change orders and grant us extensions and all this, a lot of it because we maintain our own infrastructure, but a lot of it because they have a lot of trust and faith in what we do.

[01:51:32] I think that what the city manager is saying is correct. I think that if we don't, we ask for this third option, if we don't take it, I do think it will impact us on various things in the future. But can I just be clear that if we don't take this third option and cancel the trail, there's a negative connotation.

[01:51:54] Is there a negative connotation to building the full trail? I think that that's worth a clarification, that I think at a minimum to take this option. Because I think that from my conversations with VDOT and also from Brian's, they went out on a limb at this point because they had already put in writing they were not going to do this.

[01:52:13] We told them, please give us some other kind of option. I know that Bill went out on a limb for the city on this. And we also went out on a limb for this. Council Member Hardy-Chanler.

[01:52:30] So following from that, I'd like to express my support for continuing with, as was proposed last time, two resolutions, but one for constructing the full trail, which I support, or constructing only half the trail for June 10th.

[01:52:51] Council Member Peterson. Thanks. I didn't realize we were taking positions this evening. The letter that was sent to VDOT and then subsequently hand-delivered, I think we received that only maybe yesterday, day before.

[01:53:16] I don't think the public has had a chance to see that. Is there a way we can make that available to the public? Sure, we can. The letter was, you received the letter on Thursday the same day it was delivered to VDOT.

[01:53:32] And what is the procedure for that? is that something that will be posted or how does that happen we can we can post it on the project website that's fine and then there was a similar but somewhat different communication that took place earlier at the request of the city council i think six of us that was to send an earlier alternative to vdot is it possible we can make that communication public as well that was done via email, and that was also delivered to you.

[01:54:12] And how do we post that? How do we do that? We certainly can. Yeah, we can post that as well, sure. I think it would be helpful. They're a bit different, and I think that's worth noting. And I think also the method of transmission is just noting as well.

[01:54:27] I think you noted something to the effect that it's not easy to explain the contents of this in a letter. And I think in the second case, you sat down and had a direct conversation. Did that sit down and direct conversation take place after the first communication as well?

[01:54:47] I'm not sure I understand. I had phone conversations with the VDOT staff following up to explain that it was a mostly on-road and following the line. But there was not a sit down the way that there was with Bill Cutler on Thursday.

[01:55:06] Thank you for doing that. When you did that, was it clear to VDOT that that some of that on-road design was already approved and completed so there were some segments that were again approved and completed some that were not they are aware of that the issue with that alignment as was previously previously discussed is that it is a different alignment than what was approved it I don't think it was they do know that some of that is approved but I don't think that that's what fed into their decision the

[01:55:41] decision that it is a different alignment than what was in the 100% plans did they receive any sort of maps on utilities or right away anything that would clarify that we had not prepared but what my conversation they seem to have the similar concerns to what I had as far as grade changes utility relocations and retaining wall requirements and things like that very general because they didn't have the details but i know some of the discussions i've had with other folks um they've had so i think they had they kind of looked at it briefly and had the same issues that staff had

[01:56:18] looking at it okay um and then just the to clarify the repayment level with the western build if i've got it right sort of the uh estimate here is one million six hundred fifty thousand dollars uh and then it sounds like in addition to that, there is an expense that is being incurred now with additional cost estimation. Is that correct? You said the consultant is providing some additional...

[01:56:50] What they're doing is VDOT has... In order to assist VDOT in letting us know what a repayment amount would be, our consultant is looking through the expenditures of PE to date, the $3 million, and looking at what part of that allocation sort of applies to the whole project and can be split, or is there more cost for certain elements in the west half or the east half?

[01:57:14] So he, because he's more familiar with all of the workings of the project, can assist VDOT in identifying what portion of the design cost is attributable to the east half that would be the repayment half. For example, you know, the entire project has five bridges, I think four were on the east side.

[01:57:34] Each one of those bridges has so many labor hours to design them, so they're going to split up. The consultant's going to split up man hours for the east half versus man hours for the west half and work with VDOT on what those costs are. Are there any other additional costs that we are looking at in terms of design, et cetera, on the west build here?

[01:57:59] at this time no again they're 100 plans so if the decision is to proceed with the west half only there will be additional design costs for him to um and his team to put together the new plans that update the quantities update the the bid documents so there will be a cost um probably in the realm of a hundred thousand dollars i don't know i'm ballparking of what the cost would be to compile the new plans because it needs to go back to vdot for new authorization so it's not just a you know a cutting of the plans and going forward there needs there's more work that would need to be done

[01:58:35] that we would pay for um to put to get the west half of the project ready for advertisement right some of the plan sheets you can't just cut in half some of the plan sheets have to do with the whole project so they have to to go through each sheet and and and take out what's just applies to the the west half versus what applies to the east half. So the plan preparation and revising the drawings is what will need to be done. So the package is just the total package is just the west half, which will get it ready for bid. So to that point, that cost should probably be added

[01:59:11] to this chart. And that would push it to something in the realm of 1.75? Something like that. But I also want to make it clear that that 1.5 is our estimation. We just cut it in half. It might be 1.2. it might be 1.7 i don't know i'm saying one point for the sake of the discussion because i don't have the number yet we're just saying 1.5 but yes fair enough uh and i know it may be a little bit early but with respect to that has there been any discussion around let's just call it 1.75 that

[01:59:44] needs to be repaid how we would finance that here other than vdot saying that they would work with us is that their general policy on repayments as they work with folks i don't know if we've had to repay anything we've never had to repay in the 23 years we've been i've been here we've never had to repay anything but my understanding is that the way they talk to wendy and i is that and and city managers they're very willing to work with us on a payment plan and i believe like the city manager said that 1.75 is on the high side because some of the work that was done for the project would have to be done regardless of whether it's the whole or just the west half like some of the nipa

[02:00:20] and things like that so i believe it'll be i think that's a conservative number the 1.75 And I think there was a restart to a North Vax project that had a million-dollar penalty. How was that financed? You know, I don't remember that. I know there was a payback because we switched consultants.

[02:00:39] That wasn't 100% plans. That was in the beginning of the project. I'm not sure. That was back when Sisson was city manager. I'm not sure how the finance director and the city manager repaid that back. Okay. And then just a clarification, the concessionaire funds, they – we don't have our chief financial officer here, do we?

[02:01:03] But my understanding is those funds literally sit in an account that's held by VDOT. They do not sit in a city account. That is correct. As with all of our VDOT money, it's on a repayment basis. Yeah, so we would draw at some point, but it would come through and go pretty quickly because of the efficiency of our invoicing system here.

[02:01:25] Correct. Yeah. Okay, so, again, that's not on deposit here. We're not holding on to that. This also is within the concessionaire fund, which is its own fund, which is separate from the funds that are administered by NVTA. Correct. Yeah.

[02:01:41] But with respect to NVTA and those funds, do we have a sense? And I ask, because I have an educated guess here, of what their history has been with project modifications and cancellations and their repayment approaches for that.

[02:01:59] Again, there has not been another request from another jurisdiction for a project modification or cancellation for concessionaire funds. The most recent example is an NVTA-funded project. Again, NVTA's role in this is truly to make recommendations to the CTB.

[02:02:15] They don't hold the money. they're like advisory to the CTB because they are in Northern Virginia they were given that that role of making recommendations for projects in Northern Virginia the only example is a recent project in NVT an NVTA project in Prince William County that was NVTA funded with 70% funding and the jurisdiction opted to cancel it and that jurisdiction is now repaying NVTA for that funding I don't know the structure of the repayment well and I would just

[02:02:48] note and I sit on the NVTA policy coordination etc committee and it's been an active discussion at times and those committees about the policy and the history of this my understanding based on those conversations and it's been led by NVTA's executive staff and then with participating jurisdictions it has not been uncommon based on those conversations for jurisdictions to run into snags on these kinds of projects that have required them basically to go back to the drawing board and be either redesigned restarted there have been

[02:03:26] cancellation cancellations as well that have required them to go through that so there's a history there and I would just say based on that my understanding from the conversations is those events have not resulted in punitive action towards the jurisdictions I think there may actually be one exception which I won't go into here which was an anomaly but otherwise this is regarded as being a not uncommon thing that has been experienced by jurisdictions working through projects which are of course complex and part of the complexity has

[02:04:06] been they stretch over a very long period of time and there are many complexities associated with that so I would just raise that so folks can become aware. Thank you. And I would just add, it's not ever happened in the city. So it may have happened somewhere else, but it hasn't happened here. And that's because of our staff, our planning, and the commitment of the elected bodies that had preceded this one. Are there other questions or comments?

[02:04:30] Council Member Hall. Thank you. I'm just curious. It feels like there's just a little bit of rush game that tends to happen. So we were given December, then it was moved to June 30th. Now, because we've made the request for the Western portion?

[02:04:51] Is that what's driving up this timeline? Or could we not still meet later in the month and give them the June 30 deadline that was in the letter? It won't meet. The CTB, they have a specific schedule for the CTB. This has to go to, so it's for your, to do this new choice, which is to do a Western build only, that requires a June 10th action.

[02:05:19] unless you schedule another meeting prior, but they have to have the information on June 20. So you taking action June 24 does not meet their timeline. But if we decided to go with full build or cancel, then that June 10th and then 20th deadline is not really as important and that would revert back to a June 30th deadline, or is everything now on an expedite?

[02:05:47] We can confirm, but that would be my assumption. I'm just trying to make sure. No, no, no. Fair enough. The June 10th has really revolved. We've sort of, quite honestly, sort of parked the other two options because Council wanted to pursue the third option, so that's what we've been working on.

[02:06:04] That's what they've been working on to accommodate our request. We still have the letter. I don't think that hasn't gone away. I don't have a new letter that might say that that's now off the table.

[02:06:21] I don't expect it to be off the table. I think, ultimately, they would like for us to build the whole project. I think that's probably been – that would still – if you asked them, that still would be their preference. But absent that, this western half is now an option that was not an option before.

[02:06:40] But if council does not wish to do that option, then I would assume at this point you still can make a choice of build or cancel. at your June 24th meeting, which would meet the June 30 deadline.

[02:06:57] Okay, thank you. And to the mayor's point, yes, I want to say I received about, I'm going to round up since to add in emails from today, I think, but about 65 emails in support of building the trail. So, yes, thank you for those that, I guess, were part of a petition that generated those emails that was very helpful.

[02:07:16] Thank you. So can you go back to the other slide for me, please? The chart, which, by the way, thank you for doing this in chart form. This is really, really helpful to see. And I know you put it together in a very, very quick turnaround. So thank you. If we were to go for sake of argument with the full build, and it's $20 million, if that came in over budget, what's that process?

[02:07:43] Well, we would we would have to maybe cut things out of the project, we would, or we would have to request a supplemental appropriation for it. But the hope would be that it would come in. We've been we've constantly been updating. That's why when we as soon as we had an updated budget from the 17 and it went to 20 we requested the additional funding so if it does that's why if it is going to go to build there is that urgency because time truly is money on these on this it's a bridge we'd have to cross when we get there we hope that our estimate is within our budget right in the past when we've gone over budget sometimes we're able to remove some of the line items

[02:08:22] from the bid and do those tasks in-house so we would look at that first to make sure we could stay within budget okay and then the same then the 12 million is kind of the cap for the West build only that is the estimate our consultant put together for for the West build so again and to answer mr. Amos question I don't know if that were to go over if the additional eight million dollars is available to the city to then utilize for that I don't know what the process is we'd have to return the money if it goes back to the balance entry at VDOT before or after bids commit but that's something I can certainly ask my apologies. You did ask that question. I think my brain was already focused on what I was thinking,

[02:09:01] so thank you for responding to it twice. And this is something that has always kind of puzzled me, the operating and maintenance costs of either build. So what exactly does that cover? Like, are we doing leaf removal during the fall? Are we doing snow removal during the winter?

[02:09:22] All that and more. After every major rain, there's debris on the trail. We have to clean debris off the trail sometimes you have parts of the asphalt that crack because tree roots are coming up we repair those tripping hazards there's some intersections where there's lighting where we might have to replace bulbs there's railings there's a bridge there's when after there's a storm debris gets caught up in the bridge so you know to send a crew out there to clean that up over the course of a year and then uh miss safford our urban forester added some money to that for

[02:10:00] invasive removal and maintaining the urban forest so that's that's what those operating costs are okay and does that also i know watering is always kind of a big thing when you are doing your shrubs and plants kind of like with the stream restoration do we have is that allocated in the budget for typically when when we have a landscaping contractor their their contract is is to water the plants for up to a year, and then we take over.

[02:10:26] Right, and that gives a warranty usually on the first year. Right, and there's also a warranty on the last year. And does that work for most trees and things like that too? Yeah. Is it kind of everything they plant? It really depends on the weather. If we have a brutal summer, it's not unusual for us having to enforce the warranty.

[02:10:41] Some of these things will die. But normally the contractors do a pretty good job watering it because they don't want to have to come back and replace them. Right, okay. Yeah, and I know I saw, I think it was a previous council member, Ross, posted a picture of the CCT over the weekend, the cross-country trail, where he was out there and there was a big tree that was falling over.

[02:11:02] So I know things like that we would have to go out and deal with. Just want to make sure I don't have any other questions that need to be addressed. There's no need to do a new NEPA.

[02:11:20] The existing one that we have would be sufficient. Correct. What our consultant has told me is that any reduction is within the, can be with any reduction of impact can be accommodated within our existing approvals, not only for all permits we've received. Okay. And then, Ms. Severed, can you, if you don't mind, maybe just come up and just now that this option is being presented as an option again, can you just weigh the pros and cons of the full build versus the Western build again for us?

[02:11:52] Thank you. So one thing on this table that was hard to put in one of the boxes that I have concerns about is once the trail is built, the maintenance, monitoring, restoring of this forest, it is a natural forested area.

[02:12:09] We don't currently have an urban forestry division. Our parks maintenance staff are the ones that maintain our forested areas. But as we learned at the last work session, it's pretty limited. We don't have a conservation, forest conservation program at the city with dedicated staff or funding towards that.

[02:12:27] And so I have concerns about the impact that's being made, again, on the eastern half where we had the stream restoration and this trail going in. And now you're having a narrow strip of forest that we're going to have likely additional trees needing to get removed because now we have people in the forest.

[02:12:46] with the storm damage that might happen because those trees now they've grown at in a forest condition now they're exposed they now have more exposure to wind to flooding and so there's much more monitoring and tree risk assessments that need to happen and so my main concern is that segment of forest between the stream restoration and where this trail would go and the amount of responsibility staff would be taking on when we don't have dedicated urban forestry staff at this

[02:13:17] time okay and then for the western portion are those things manageable the way that they are or they're still the same concerns but just not as extreme because of the stream restoration that's currently going on correct yeah the the footprint on the western half is smaller as well as the western half again it has less um there's less grade through that area and so the amount of clearing that's going to occur is less um and so just the overall footprint um and so again the

[02:13:51] exposure to wind and invasives is a little bit less um but overall it's generally still a concern but again less okay thank you and i'm sorry i did forget to have one question that was up on here Can you answer the question about down at the bottom of the full build, it says that there are two unsettled right-of-way acquisitions, but there's not a concern if we were to do the Western portion only?

[02:14:18] No, the two unsettled, so similar to the discussion you had about the Blenheim Boulevard project, there are two, we have all the right-of-way, so we've done the certificate of take. These are ones where we have not come to final settlement.

[02:14:35] And so it's a possibility that those could go to court if we don't get a final settlement. But as Mr. Lubcomen said, we have very good estimates. And so the value you're talking about incremental value difference, ultimately.

[02:14:57] I don't know what those two values are, but I mean, all of right-of-way was $750, so $150 is in the east half. you're only talking so 550 for all the rest i i don't know if wendy happens to know the value of those two so i don't know offhand but to answer your question that should have been in that column also that risk exists for both the full trail and the west half trail i need to add that okay so the right away issue is on the western it's on the western not correct oh i'm sorry thank you thank you five parcels one of them um is in the east part the other four are on the west of the four Two have been settled, two are not.

[02:15:33] So either way, that risk exists, so I need to add that, correct? Okay, thank you very much for clarifying that. I'm sorry. Thank you, Wendy. I didn't catch that exactly, so thank you. Other questions? Council Member Peterson?

[02:15:50] There was a little bit of correspondence today about the extension segment. I think this is on the website. Fairfax City has developed a conceptual design for a shared use path.

[02:16:07] On Fairfax Boulevard, the 850-foot-long path will run between the end of the soon-to-be-constructed George T. Snyder Trail and the start of the Wilcoxon Trail, linking the two trails. Can you just clarify that the conceptual design on Route 50, that's for a shared-use bike path?

[02:16:28] Correct. So this project came about after we had funding for this project. There was really very little space to do this behind the properties. And ultimately, if you look at the park's master plan, what it's showing is the trail continuing behind the Harley-Davidson dealership and connecting to the Wilcoxon Trail in that area behind the dealership.

[02:16:55] In the interim, the question was, how can the city connect the end of the George Snyder Trail to the Wilcoxon Trail? And so this is when the idea of the extension came about. There was, again, no space behind these properties.

[02:17:14] So it's a shared-use path from in front of Circle Glass to the signal at Draper Drive, and then users would cross Draper Drive, and then again it would be a shared-use path in front of the Harley-Davidson dealership to the beginning of the Wilcoxon Trail entrance.

[02:17:29] So it's about 800 linear feet. And so that is a VDOT smart-scale funded project. And so what is the question? Well, just first to confirm that the design is for a shared use path on Route 50, is this a 10-foot wide?

[02:17:48] I believe so. I'd have to go back and look, but yes. Same as this happening? Correct. It goes back. I mean, most of the project cost is right-of-way acquisition to provide this. And I would have to go back and look at the design, but I do believe it is 10 feet wide. I'll verify. Okay, and it is on Fairfax Boulevard.

[02:18:05] Correct. And I don't know if you got far enough to determine whether or not a protective barrier of any kind would be associated with that. Do you know? No, but it is following the shared use path standard, which is why there is a significant amount of right-of-way acquisition.

[02:18:21] So it has the setbacks that are required from the roadway. But there's not a physical barrier, if I remember correctly. But there will be probably some retaining walls because of the grade elevation changes as you go back from the curb. But this is a separate project.

[02:18:37] Completely separate. This is funded with VDOT smart scale funding versus concessionaire. Is that expected to continue on, I guess, eastward any further on Route 50 just out of curiosity? The idea was that this was meant to be sort of a short-term connection, again, between the Snyder and the Wilcoxon until the larger connection were what's shown in the comprehensive plan and the park strategic plan going behind, crossing Route 50 and going behind the Harley.

[02:19:06] If you look at the map, you can see the line goes that way. So this is meant to be sort of a bridge until that larger aspiration is met. Okay, thank you. But that segment, is that segment stranded and not really operational without the completion of the eastern portion?

[02:19:34] I can't answer that question. It's what VDOT would be looking at. And so this does address the mayor's question from earlier. It's whether or not, I mean, the reason that this scored so well in SmartScale was because it was truly a missing link of a funded project, the George Schneider Trail, and an existing project, the Wilcoxon Trail.

[02:19:50] I don't know what VDOT will do. I don't know if they will say that this has independent utility and therefore can continue. I don't know if a cancellation of the project or a construction of the West only would impact the scoring and the status of those funds.

[02:20:08] Those funds are not available to us yet. They are future funding. I believe they come on in FY26 or 27. I also need to check, which is why it's not an active project at this point. And the eastern half, just hypothetically, let's say it's not built now.

[02:20:29] Is that still set up so that it can be built later? I mean, we have the plans. So the plans would still exist, but if it is canceled now, we would have to apply for funding for that at a later date because that funding would go away.

[02:20:48] Okay. It goes back a little bit to a conversation we started about whether or not any of this might be placed into some sort of a conservation easement to protect it in the future based on the potential that it may still further be eligible for development.

[02:21:09] Okay, just to add two notes on the financial side. One, I think there's been a lot of interest in the amount of funding that's been made available and what happens with those funds for the city.

[02:21:26] So obviously the $20 million of funds are available for construction. The firms that actually win these bids have, as I understand it, not been local firms. I think the restoration project was won by a firm in Pennsylvania, and the project way back at Blenheim was also a Pennsylvania firm.

[02:21:49] But I don't think VDOT allows us to do local preference on bids, if I understand that correctly. I make the point because that money is not going to companies that reside here in the city. So the deposits to banks will happen in Pennsylvania, and the purchasing with dollar bills that are retained there will happen somewhere out of state.

[02:22:11] so these are not dollars that stay here, if I understand it correctly. A lot of, most of our sidewalk, paving, asphalt projects are local firms in Virginia just because of the mobilization and where the plants are.

[02:22:28] Stream restoration is kind of a specialty, just like the blenum is a specialty, but a lot of the firms, and I can think of numerous contractor names, that do trails, sidewalks, roadway, intersections, traffic signals, or in the state of Virginia, sometimes Maryland.

[02:22:46] And how many of them are in the city of Fairfax? Very, very few, yeah. Okay, all right. Just the final financial note, it was a little bit of a quip that was made during an NVTA CPAC meeting about funding. And again, they have their own pool of funds, but in a case where funds are not used and are freed up, et cetera, the financial officer just made the comment, Look, we do well with our funds.

[02:23:15] We pulled 18% off them last year. So if they come back here, we continue to be sure that they're very well invested and they grow so they can be redeployed, just to make that point. But that happens in their account and not ours. Thank you. Other questions or comments?

[02:23:34] Okay. So we are going to have resolutions on June 10th. Our city manager will not be with us. He is going to be on a well-deserved vacation. But I think that we can manage this as a body I will just say in closing, I have never wavered from my commitment for the full trail since I became mayor in January of 2023.

[02:23:57] I take the responsibility of stewardship for these infrastructure projects very seriously and what it means not just to our city, but to this region. And talking about the connector trail from the George Snyder to the Wilcoxon, this has always been the vision for what this region wanted.

[02:24:13] That is what these funds were designed to do. And I do not have a say in this For people who don't understand my role I do not have a vote on this dais Unless there is a tie Which is why I was not canvassed As to what I felt about the half trail Because the majority of four Rules this dais I do not have a vote Unless there is a tie So I am not involved Exactly in how this came down But I do want to make it clear I have always supported a full build Of this trail

[02:24:46] It is a generational infrastructure project that will, 50 years beyond when I'm on this earth, will still be enjoyed by people, used by people, and it will make an impact on the development and the desirability of the city. But we will revisit this on June the 10th.

[02:25:05] Ms. Clark, who's next? Our next item is a presentation on the Old Town Parking Study. Wendy Sanford, Transportation Director, will provide the staff presentation. I promise this is my last presentation with you tonight.

[02:25:25] Yeah, nice to see you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you both. Okay, great. Are you right here? Yes. Perfect.

[02:26:00] Okay. Would you like me to begin or would you like me to wait? Because three members are-- Okay. This presentation is exactly that. It's a presentation of a study of parking in Old Town. This study was initiated by the former city manager, and it was a joint collaborative effort between the Transportation Division and the Planning Division.

[02:26:27] And so we put out an RFP and to request the services of a consultant to evaluate parking, public and private parking available in Old Town. There are, this is a very specialty item, and we were very lucky to have our consultants from Walker Consultants respond.

[02:26:50] And they are here this evening. They have flown in from out of town to be here. And the purpose of the presentation tonight is truly just to present what they have found. It's a very interesting study. The executive summary and the full report were included in your meeting packet. And the purpose of the presentation, there's no council action that will be asked even in the future.

[02:27:10] The idea is to present this to you for information. So with that, I'd first just like to introduce the team that is here from Walker Consultants. We have John Dorsett and Nigel Harreth, who are here from Walker Consultants. And then we, the staff team that worked on this was Paul Napty in our planning department and Chloe Ritter in our transportation division.

[02:27:29] We also worked with Jason and with Paul. The whole team is here. So with that, I will allow John to present the report. Great. Thank you, Wendy. Again, I'm John Dorsett with Walker Consultants.

[02:27:47] Just by way of introduction, Walker Consultants has been in business for 60 years. We're a consulting engineer, architecture, and planning firm. I've been with the firm for 35 years, and I've made a living doing parking studies, believe it or not. I've been to and worked in all 50 states, and I've probably worked with probably close to 1,000 different municipalities in some capacity.

[02:28:12] And we're here to talk about the Old Town Fairfax parking. Next slide, please. So I have three different topics here. One, I want to give you a baseline, existing parking conditions. Then we're going to talk about future conditions, and then we'll have some recommendations, and then we'll open up for Q&A.

[02:28:33] So the dotted line on the map on the screen there shows the study area. And so basically the epicenter of the study area is bordered by Maine and University, and then it radiates from that intersection, you know, roughly about two or three blocks in each direction.

[02:28:53] There are about 6,300 total parking spaces within that study area. That includes on-street parking and also off-street parking. And the off-street is segmented by surface parking lots and also parking located in multi-story parking structures.

[02:29:12] You'll notice in the table that the public supply is less during weekday business hours. And that's because a number of the privately owned spaces become available to the general public during evenings and weekends.

[02:29:30] So you'll notice the 7% versus the 16% on the blue line. So we were here on five days in September and October last year, and we performed counts at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m.

[02:29:51] And we did that for both a weekday and a weekend day. And I was personally out here, I think the three days I was out here in September, I probably walked over 40 miles. so i think i know your old town pretty well probably not as well as you do you're here every day i'm not but um what we found when we recorded parking occupancy for those 6300 spaces is during the weekday noon peak remember we counted nine noon three six and nine noon was the peak hour so we're just going to show you the peak hour um it was 34 percent occupancy during a weekday

[02:30:30] And then on Saturday, during the noon peak, it was 23% occupancy. The green shows, you know, less than half occupied. And then the heat maps show that when you get closer to the main and university intersection, where the heart of the public supply is located, then the occupancies increase.

[02:30:53] We were also asked to look at 9 p.m., and I think the reason for this was there was a development proposal for an event center, which is likely to generate parking demand at night so you know what's parking occupancy at night well on a weekday and a weekend both at 9 pm is 14 percent occupancy so again plenty of parking in the downtown but it does tend to be busier near the epicenter this shows a summary of the public this is public parking only so

[02:31:32] this does not include any of the privately owned spaces And as you can see, there's still quite a bit of green shown on both a weekday noon peak and also the Saturday noon peak. We're at 50% occupancy on the weekday and 40% on Saturday.

[02:31:54] And then at night, the occupancy drops to 31%, both on a weekday and a weekend. So that's the baseline. What we do next is we build a model that allows us to look at future parking conditions, and this is the process we follow.

[02:32:20] Step one is we take existing conditions as our baseline. Step two, we identify future development projects, and I'll get into that more in a little bit here. Step three, we identify the details of those future development projects.

[02:32:35] So that includes the timing, when these projects are going to come online, the type and quantity of land uses, you know, and their impact on parking. You know, are they bringing additional supply to the Old Town area? Are we going to lose parking? Step four is removing any existing land uses that might be displaced.

[02:32:56] There might be some demolition projects to make room for the new ones. Step five is determine the parking demand for the proposed development projects. And that's based on industry standards. Step six is to determine the future parking adequacy by year and also by block.

[02:33:17] And then step seven is to review the adequacy by block and identify and develop options for consideration. So we really had two different sources to determine future development projects. One was your small area plan.

[02:33:32] And then the second source was projects that had been submitted for consideration by developers. And we pulled information on those projects off your website, or we were able to get that information from city staff.

[02:33:53] And then we broke the future development projects into three different time periods, 0 to 5, 6 to 10, and 11 to 15 years. And we characterized short, mid, and long-term development. And this is consistent with your small area plan.

[02:34:10] I'm not going to go through all this line by line, but, again, there's two sources here. One is the major development projects identified for the near term, again, provided by city staff and your website, and the other is a small area plan.

[02:34:31] The projects proposed include their own parking, so there was 1,300 spaces there. And then for the small area plan, we based those future spaces on what the zoning ordinance requires in the way of a parking minimum. So in total, these projects will be bringing an additional 2,200 spaces online to the Old Town area.

[02:34:57] These are your zoning requirements. So the table at the top of this slide includes the parking minimums. And so for multifamily housing, the requirement is one and a half spaces for a one or studio unit.

[02:35:13] For a two-bedroom or larger, two-bedroom, three-bedroom, four-bedroom unit, two spaces are required, and that includes townhomes, hotel, one space per hotel room key, office, 3.3 spaces per thousand, and retail and restaurant at five spaces per thousand.

[02:35:32] And then there are reductions for these areas, whether it's the transition overlay, which is shown in the Goldenrod color, or the historic overlay districts. Next. This is a list of the short-term development projects that the city staff and the developer proposals provided.

[02:35:56] The map shows the locations of the projects. And then these are the projects that were taken from the small area plan and that fall within the mid-term planning tranche.

[02:36:12] And then similarly, we had long-term projects identified here. We applied industry standards to the metrics. So for housing, it was based on number of units. For retail or dining or medical office, it was based on square footage.

[02:36:34] And again, all these base ratios are based on industry standards. And then we make other adjustments based on industry standards. And what we have here, the map is showing, this is long-term planning horizon.

[02:36:54] So this is 11 to 15 years down the road. And so we're showing a parking supply that has grown from about 6,300 to 8,700 parking spaces. The demand has also increased. We're probably at about a 48% occupancy, which is about 14 points higher than what we measured in existing conditions.

[02:37:21] And then when you look at the weekday noon peak, again, long-term, this is 11, 15 years out. We're at a 45% projected occupancy, and that's a 22% increase. But you still have 55% of your spaces is vacant, so you're still in good shape.

[02:37:40] What we're doing here is we're zeroing in. So these are insets of the larger study area map, and these are focusing on a number of the public parking lots that are located near the intersection of University and Maine.

[02:37:58] And what we're showing, you know, based on future development is the short-term, these lots are looking at a 68% occupancy, and then the long-term horizon, we're in 103%.

[02:38:13] We did look at the Ox Fairfax, the Block A development proposal. We treated this generically in the report, but we had to have some assumptions to test the parking supply demand modeling.

[02:38:35] So this is what we modeled. The developer proposal called for a 4,100 capacity concert hall. And so that concert hall would presumably be used with more attendees on a weekend night than it would during a weekday.

[02:38:55] And they would also be bringing some parking online. They would preserve 94 existing surface spaces, and then they would bring a 428-space garage online. So we ran this through the model, and the next slides talk about the results of modeling this.

[02:39:16] So, again, this is focusing on the public parking supply within the core of the Old Town area, and what we're showing here is 128% occupancy in the short term. That would be zero to five years out, And then long-term, 11 to 15 years, we're showing a 167% occupancy.

[02:39:39] And this is on a weekend. So recommendations. We did see several things that we liked about the parking system downtown. The automated parking signage is excellent.

[02:39:56] Keep that up. The reason that's so important is because when motorists drive down the street, they can't see in the parking deck to see what the parking availability is. But when they see that sign, that's a really great advertisement to let people know what the space availability is.

[02:40:13] And also it advertises that there's public parking there. You know, we like the red paint to denote the fire hydrants. The zoning ordinance allows shared parking and encourages it.

[02:40:33] So we think you should continue to support that and allow for parking reductions as a result of shared parking. And then the automated parking guidance. So we broke our recommendations up into three different categories.

[02:40:53] One is the organizational changes. The second category is communication, marketing, and wayfinding. Third, parking policies and practices. And the fourth is an optional add more parking.

[02:41:09] So the parking champion, and this may not be a full-time position, but maybe it could be part-time city staffer who would focus on uh you know being the the spear of the arrow on um all things parking and all things public parking old town fairfax and um they would communicate with all the different stakeholders uh they would manage you know local projects whether it's signing away finding improvements um but they could maybe it's improving the parking

[02:41:45] enforcement but you have one person or maybe a part of an FTE who could kind of be the focus for this and then we also had some infrastructure improvements we really liked I think this is on main street on the top photo where you have on-street parking delineated with some hash marks and so that removes the ambiguity of you know where the parking spot starts and ends and

[02:42:16] It's a well organized approach, and we would recommend that you adopt that practice and apply that more consistently within your Old Town area. And then we also recommend more uniform signage and wayfinding for your public parking spaces so that when people are driving in the Old Town area, they know more precisely what's public and what's private.

[02:42:43] The private property owners have done an excellent job of marking spaces that are intended for private use. we took a lot of pictures to document that it's clear that if it's privately owned you know in most cases public parking is not welcome and you know towing is threatened so and and that's not unique to fairfax we see that in cities all over all over the country you've done a good job with

[02:43:17] your parking website there's a good identification of where the public spaces are located the one challenge that we found was it wasn't easy to navigate to get to this page. When we went into the city's website, we actually didn't find this. The way we found it was we went to Google and we did a search for the city of Fairfax parking, and then that page to the far right is what came up. So some people might just be going to the city looking for

[02:43:52] the parking, and if they're doing that, they might have trouble finding it. So that's an easy fix and we know the city's working on addressing this issue. Parking enforcement it needs to be consistently enforced you have two hour posted time limits without enforcement there are abuses so we need have regular parking enforcement officers out patrolling making sure that those spaces are turning over. Shared parking agreements I mentioned this earlier and we would

[02:44:31] encourage you to continue to promote more of these you know you have one in place that's really good with the old town plaza you know shopping center parking garage and that's great you know but let's see if we can do more and you have a couple others but let's see if we can do more of these and then your zoning ordinance it does allow for shared parking you could add a remedy that says hey if the developer can't meet the minimum requirements even by applying shared parking methodology you know give them an out say hey if you can develop a lease agreement with the property owner within you know so many

[02:45:10] feet of your development you know that could that agreement could ride with that real estate title and other cities have done that and we think it's good to provide a remedy and then I think the last finding and recommendation for your consideration is you know a public parking deck we're not necessarily recommending this but if you were to consider we did look at three sites we looked at

[02:45:42] the public parking lots next to the victorian plaza we also looked at the ox fairfax block b and then finally the fire department site and we picked and looked at these sites because there's enough real estate there to do reasonably built efficient garage you could probably do three to four level facility with three to four hundred spaces on any one of these three sites it probably

[02:46:14] wants to be a 15 to 20 million dollar project so is it needed well yes and no it's not needed if you don't modify your zoning ordinance your zoning ordinance has parking minimums and so future development projects that you have come online those developers are required to bake parking into their projects and the other thing that we're relying on here is the county has judicial garage B

[02:46:50] available for public parking during evenings and weekends and that's a 1900 space facility that's within 1200 feet of the Oxford Fairfax Block A project so we think the availability of that garage and the current zoning ordinance the way it's written negates the need for a new garage but if you're going to change your zoning ordinance and remove your parking minimums or if you're going to put a parking ban in place, or if the county woke up one day and decided Garage B no longer

[02:47:27] publicly available, then you're going to have some problems with that project that was proposed where they're planning to bring 4,100 people in for an event. So that's kind of the yes and no, and that's really the key takeaway of the study is, you know, you don't need a garage, but if these things happen, you might need a garage.

[02:47:53] So to summarize, you know, you have enough parking. We think you're gonna have enough parking through the next 15 years, but if, again, if the county pulls out the rug under the public use of Garage B, or you decide you wanna change your zoning ordinance, you might wanna consider building that parking.

[02:48:16] We think you should have a parking champion. Keep on developing those shared parking agreements. Those are deferring and eliminating the need for you to build more parking, so we support that. So Q&A, questions?

[02:48:34] Councilmember Amos. Thank you for the presentation. I do have to say I am genuinely impressed. 51 slides and 38 slides, but you got it done before 10. Well played. Well played. So just a couple points first. I think that something that was reiterated back in January that I think we also agree on is improving foot traffic overall, pedestrian foot traffic in Old Town, and also developing a nightlife.

[02:49:01] So one thing to consider, especially with this parking study, is also unique or creative economic development opportunities that we could brainstorm on how we can improve. For example, we'll get to that when we have the transportation study coming on July 1st because I know we have another work session, so we'll save that for then.

[02:49:21] I guess an IT question for the parking page, the website. I know we don't have IT here, but were they aware of your research and difficulty finding the parking page and is that being the our current website is going to complete overhaul which we um so this is this is not an uncommon concern that's been expressed and so um the last update i got was we we hope to be able to go live on the new site sometime in july um they're literally we're literally going page by page um updating the information consolidating getting

[02:49:59] rid of all outdated stuff, making it more user-friendly, more intuitive, et cetera. So I think when the new site comes out, you'll, everyone will be pleased with the functionality. I figured that was the case.

[02:50:16] I saw that the Davies property was one that was considered. Did it also consider the Christopher Company's property or did that come after? I don't think they, they haven't really submitted. We had a pre, whatever we call those things.

[02:50:31] had a presentation but they haven't submitted anything so i don't know that but but yes council member bates i think as i recall it was included in the midterm we go back to that number two mixed use so so that does bring up something specific if you think about the mosaic or the wharf

[02:51:06] in dc you know when you have developers build mixed use they have parking for residents but but they're also building structured parking for retail and commercial too. And in the Mosaic, there's all kinds of parking that are like behind the building and underneath.

[02:51:23] It says visitors, but then there's a gated part where you have to have a card to get in if you're a resident. And so I think some of the parking is going to end up being provided for the city by these mixed-use development projects. It'll be unrestricted access for people accessing retail downtown because that's what it seems to be in other places in the region so you know the city you know building our own parking garage we probably don't need to do that but i think when we look at parking for mixed use it's not just parking per unit you know because i'm not sure the calculations in a small

[02:52:00] urban city that everybody's coming with a car or two cars some people are coming with zero cars but the point is if people are coming into our city as visitors they need to park in one place and be able to walk through the whole city. I mean, that's what you find in Old Town Alexandria, for instance.

[02:52:17] You know, you park in one place and you stay all day. And that's the kind of structure parking I'm hoping that some of the shared responsibility will be these redeveloped properties that are now currently asphalt parking lots, lots of asphalt parking lots here.

[02:52:33] But to build mixed use means to build a combination of residential parking and retail commercial parking. Councilmember Hardy Chandler. Thank you for your report. And one of the things that stood out to me was the uniformity or the consistency of the signage.

[02:52:51] Because just like the website, if you can't find the parking and you're visiting for a particular event, then that makes it increasingly more frustrating. I think that's something that I've noticed in various areas in Virginia. But what have been some of the approaches to uniformity with signage and wayfinding that have been effective for an area like ours, particularly with the private-public sort of shared spaces?

[02:53:23] Well, it's really a form of branding. So you can apply different architectural treatments to signage. You can use different colors. But it's also about the messaging. So if you have a lot, for example, that's shared use, but maybe it's only shared for a certain portion of the day or maybe only certain days of the week, that needs to be on the sign.

[02:53:48] And people need to also be able to recognize where the public parking is located. And so you want a consistent logo that advertises where those public spaces are available, and that should also tie into your website.

[02:54:06] So it's really all about good design and then the execution of that good design. And there have been, you know, lots of cities that have had this similar problem or challenge and, you know, they've been able to address that. I think one of the things that would be helpful is international symbols.

[02:54:28] There are a lot of international symbols that we recognize, but free parking would be something, it would be great if somebody had an icon that showed, you know, certain kinds of parking like evening and weekend. parking is a certain color and a certain icon and you know free public parking is a different color icon that you don't necessarily have to rely on people reading English if people understand and I just wish that that was more broadly embraced because we have people who speak lots of different languages in this region and who come here as visitors and so if we had a system that makes sense but it would be much better to have an

[02:55:06] international system that makes sense we could be trendsetters Council Member McQuillan So piggybacking on what the mayor just mentioned, that was one of my notes here, was with the signage, and this is more to just get on record, that to make it please easy to understand, because as someone who frequents other cities, driving around slowly looking for that spot and then trying to understand when it's available, when it isn't, back to your point, it's very challenging.

[02:55:37] So even for an English speaker who loves to read. I did have a question about APGS, the Auto Parking Guidance System. Can you explain that a little bit more, please? What is that? Well, the signage that you have. That's just the whole thing.

[02:55:53] Well, that's one form of it. There's another form of it that would advertise the number of spaces available per level within a parking lot. Oh, I understand. So it's that digital sign that lets us know how many are. at the garage and then like at bwi airport they have the single individual space so over each stall there's either red or green light okay and then um we just just to introduce we looked at all of this and went for the one that truly just captures cars going in cars going out to put a number because we felt like the number wasn't the key message it was trying to say there is

[02:56:30] available parking yes and i love it i love that because i drive by that sign all the time and it is very easy to understand. I do have a question for staff as well. This might be for our city manager. What factors or tools do we have in place so that when we, as you were discussing the future, when we get to that position where either zoning changes take place or things like, what's the tool that provides that recommendation again? Since we might not all be the same council sitting here, do you then go and say, okay, now's the time based off of the parking study to discuss

[02:57:06] consideration of implementing a parking garage or is there a system in place for that I'm going to look to our planning team because I suspect they could probably answer that question better than I can yeah that is a challenging question because a lot of it is unpredictable this study helps us a lot in determining that it's not something urgent with unless some major changing factors such as the ox proposal moves forward but in the future even if it doesn't there could be some other use that is, you know, different than the norm and has more of a demand, has more demand at certain hours and those types of things.

[02:57:43] So it's hard to predict far ahead of time when we would need to do that kind of thing. I think for us it's going to be more about monitoring as redevelopment happens and per the mayor's comments that with each development we will try to have agreements so that the retail portions of development are shareable and publicly accessible, but if we start to see that the trends are that we aren't getting the parking quantity that we expected or that demands are more than we expected then we'd have to start planning for a parking garage then so there's no such trigger it's more about monitoring as time goes on okay so that would fall under zoning sorry is that like a zoning a parking garage is it would be ultimately be a capital

[02:58:22] improvement program issue yeah so but it would be presented by or yeah yeah I I think to piggyback on what Paul's saying, I mean, I think as we monitor, as conditions change or, you know, if, you know, just making up something extreme, you know, George Mason decides they want to build a new arena and they don't want to put it on their campus and they want to plop it downtown, that would be something we haven't thought about or prepared for.

[02:58:52] But as those, if something like that were to come up or other kinds of development, that's when we would say, okay, this is, you know, we can, you know, keep my, we can redo a study such as this, but also say, okay, this is when we need to look at that, perhaps look at that.

[02:59:09] I think the key thing that this study shows is that we really do have ample parking in the Old Town. Remember, we just studied that was the focus, was the Old Town area. So it does show that we have ample parking, except for perhaps, I think, the slide on key special events where you're having something very focused that's drawing an influx of people.

[02:59:36] Perhaps then the parking maybe isn't adequate, but you would not design parking to have for based on a one-off event or even if it's two or three times a year or something like that. So I think we would continue to monitor, but also, as has also been said, I think as these development projects come online, part of the thing we do is the parking requirements that we put in place to make sure that it's not necessarily taxing or utilizing all of the parking requirements.

[03:00:06] parking capacity that we already have thank you that's exactly what I wanted to hear thank you I appreciate that all right before I ask if there's any other questions it is 10 o'clock we've got two more presentations so if there's we're ready councilmember Peterson one quick question if you we do run into kind of a tight scenario with respect to parking capacity I mean one option is you build the garage simply put but how much of that problem potentially solves itself through modal shift and what do we need to do proactively to enable that if we're

[03:00:45] headed in that direction it's a good question I'm I think I think our analysis conservatively assumes really not a lot of change over the next 15 years so if you disagree with that and think that we're going to see a lot of change then we're even further away from needing a parking garage than what this shows. All right. Thanks. Thank you very much. Very informative. We all took something away from

[03:01:19] this tonight. Ms. Clark? Our next item is a historic properties evaluation update. Eric Foreman,

[03:01:28] senior planner, will provide the staff presentation. Okay. Well, thank you very much.

[03:02:14] Pleasure to be here today to talk about this project. We're joined here today by our consultant, Boyd Seip from Thunderbird Archaeology. So Mr. Seip will actually be conducting the presentation.

[03:02:31] But before he begins, I just want to make a few comments about this project. So this project has examined several properties in the city to determine if those properties may be candidates for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, and possibly in a city historic district as well. Now, our city's comprehensive plan includes a goal of protecting and enhancing historic resources. And one of the outcomes of that goal is for eligible structures and properties

[03:03:08] to be protected through local historic designation and through strategic investments. Two of the actions from that outcome are to preserve existing buildings of historical or architectural significance and to support new locally designated historic districts and landmarks where appropriate so to help implement that goal last year the city selected thunderbird archaeology to conduct this study and to conduct conduct it in order to examine five separate properties

[03:03:44] within the city for their architectural significance or for their cultural significance and now these properties they were all recommended for evaluation in a 2021 historic district boundary study that the city had conducted and and what evaluation or evaluate means in this case is to study these properties to determine if they would be potentially eligible to be included on the national register of historic places so just a quick word about the national register the

[03:04:19] The National Register is a list that's managed by the National Park Service of buildings or of sites that are historically significant. So historically significant either to the nation or to a state or to a local area. The National Register is not just a trophy that's awarded to a building if it gets old.

[03:04:40] Well, a lot of people think it is. So to be eligible for the National Register, a property really has to be proven to be a significant resource. So based on architecture, based on history, based on archaeology, based on association with notable people or events and so on.

[03:05:01] So the historic research here was a bit different for each site. So I'll just give a very brief overview of the types of historical assessments before I turn the presentation over to our consultant. These five properties, they include Germantown Cemetery and include four structures. Now, Germantown Cemetery, this evaluation included historical research on the cemetery itself, included field work, also included a ground penetrating radar

[03:05:34] survey of the cemetery grounds and that was able to reveal the extent of burials on the site. For the old Fairfax Elementary School building and for the Sisson House, the consultants performed what's known as a phase two architectural investigation. So this included archival research, also included documenting, photographing, and measuring the building's exterior and interior or on a very detailed level.

[03:06:01] For the Davies property and for Far Home Place or Five Chimneys, the consultants performed what's known as a determination of NRHP eligibility. So that type of report, it has the same goal as a phase two evaluation, and that goal is to determine if the property is eligible, potentially eligible for National Register listing.

[03:06:24] It includes similar archival research, but the difference is that the examination of the structure itself is performed using secondary resources. So as opposed to that detailed measuring and documenting on the site itself, it's secondary resources. So one final thing before I turn it over, I think it's important to keep in mind that these reports are all assessments. So there's nothing that the city is required to do as the result of these reports, but at the very end of tonight's presentation we'll discuss what potential next steps could be if

[03:07:00] council elects to go forward with it so with that happy to turn it over to mr. Seip to talk about these properties thank you Eric and thank you Mayor Reed members of council for the opportunity to speak to you tonight I think Eric set the stage really well so I will I'll go ahead and well first I do want to mention, the work was conducted by my group at Thunderbird Archaeology, where a division of wetland studies and solutions incorporated, a natural and cultural resources consulting

[03:07:36] company with headquarters in Gainesville, Virginia, and offices around Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland. I was the principal investigator for all of these projects. My My assistant David Carroll did most of the research and field work and authored the reports for all excepting the Germantown Cemetery.

[03:08:05] That work was conducted by one of our archaeologists, Sebastian Salgado Flores. Mr. Carroll and I are both -- we both meet the Secretary of the Interior's professional Qualification Standards for Archaeology History and Architectural History, and Mr. Salgado Flores meets the Secretary of the Interior's Professional Qualification Standards for Archaeology.

[03:08:32] I'll jump into the different resources that we looked at, starting with the Far Home Place or five chimneys. This is a historic building located at 10230 Main Street and as Eric mentioned, this was a limited survey.

[03:08:50] We were not allowed access to the interior. So our research focused on archival research and documentation from the public right-of-way. Primary resource at the five chimneys is the dwelling.

[03:09:07] It's a two-story American bond brick dwelling built in a colonial revival style around 1880. Notable feature is its five chimneys, hence the name, each with a cross and masonry relief.

[03:09:22] Two secondary resources on the property that we know about from aerial photography but because of limited access we were unable to further assess those buildings. And additionally, previous research at the site documented an archeological site on the property and that is an early to mid 19th century domestic occupation and Civil War era U.S. military encampment dating from 1862 to 1863.

[03:09:58] Five Chimneys was built about 1880 as mentioned for attorney Richard Radcliffe II whose family and descendants resided there until today. After serving in the Civil War with the Rangers in the Confederate Army, Richard Farr II served in Fairfax as a school teacher, lawyer, and House of Delegates representative.

[03:10:26] He served as the second state superintendent of public instruction and as a U.S. Marshal. His son, R.R. Farr III, was a prominent lawyer, mayor of Fairfax. He also resided at Five Chimneys. Richard Farr II, his brother, Wilson Farr, was a schoolteacher, lawyer, bank president, commonwealth attorney. He also resided at Five Chimneys. Wilson Farr was responsible for selling a large tract of the Farr family lands that led to the establishment of George of Mason University on the property.

[03:11:05] We -- based on this information, we assessed Richard Farr II, his son, Richard Farr III, and Wilson Farr as individuals who were historically significant at the local and state level.

[03:11:26] Our survey showed that the Farr home place has undergone few alterations in its 140-year history. It's a well-preserved and largely unaltered example of an upper class dwelling from the late 19th century.

[03:11:45] We feel it maintains its integrity of association, design, feeling, location, material setting and workmanship. These are all elements that are necessary for a property to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

[03:12:00] So based on our survey, with the limitation that we were unable to access the interior, but we believe it is unlikely that the dwelling has been significantly modified on the interior.

[03:12:16] We assessed the five chimneys as potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under criteria, criterion B in association with the historic individuals and under criterion C in association with the architectural merit of five chimneys.

[03:12:40] We also looked at the Robert L. Sisson house at basically next door at 4219 Chainbridge Road. This was a phase two architectural survey. We were able to enter the building and document it in addition to doing the archival research.

[03:13:05] The primary dwelling is a two and a half story, five bay frame hall and parlor house. It's built in a T plan and vernacular style. It was built around 1869. I think some people thought that it was a bit older than that, but our research was pretty conclusive that it dates to just a few years after the Civil War.

[03:13:28] There's one secondary resource on the property and that's a one-and-a-half story garage or shed built in 1969. Based on our survey, we feel the Robert L. Sisson house lacks integrity of association material setting and workmanship.

[03:13:51] Despite having some colorful history and some sensational history and that there was a famous suicide in the house in 1907 we felt that no individuals of historical significance were associated with the property although it remains in its original location and essentially maintains its original layout and integrity of design and location we feel that the resource is not eligible for listing in the national register of historic places under any criteria due to its

[03:14:30] overall lack of integrity and that's that's mainly associated with alterations to the interior of the building that have happened in the recent past we also studied the davies house also known as the hill and there's a historic dwelling at 4131 chain bridge road this was a limited survey as we were not able to access the interior of the building.

[03:15:02] Primary resource is a two and a half story five bay frame dwelling built in the colonial revival style in 1916. The hill is an early example of what is considered a more correct expression of the colonial revival style that dominated the style after 1920 so this building was sort of on the cutting edge of architecture in its day.

[03:15:36] Secondary resources on the property include circa 1916 one story frame garage, circa 1916 story frame shed I believe and a 1955 one story concrete shed I will note that the preservation of the two 1916 ancillary buildings in our opinion increases the significance of the property it's sort of as a set it you have the the original dwelling and some of it at

[03:16:15] least two of its original outbuildings which is is somewhat rare and increases the the feeling and historic feeling and association of the property the hill was built for attorney marshall hall and his wife martha in 1916 on land purchased from john barber in 1920 richard thornton a virginia state senator and prominent local businessman and his wife sue purchased the property and they resided at the Hill until their deaths.

[03:16:52] In the mid 20th century Bankhead T Davies, a prominent lawyer and businessman resided at the Hill, Davies distinguished 66 year career included private law practice and service in numerous public service professional and philanthropic roles.

[03:17:09] He was remembered by a joint resolution of the Virginia State Legislature for his service to the Commonwealth of Virginia after his death. We assessed Marshall Hall and, excuse me, Richard Thornton, both as historically significant individuals at the state and local level.

[03:17:43] The hill is a well-preserved and largely unaltered example of an upper-class dwelling in the colonial revival style. mentioned it was you know at the leading edge of its architectural style at the time of its construction we feel it maintains overall integrity except for integrity of setting which has been affected by the late 20th century urban development and the vicinity of the resource but due to the significance of of the individuals associated with the property

[03:18:21] and due to the architectural merit of the hill, we feel this resource is potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under criteria B and C.

[03:18:39] We also looked at the historic Fairfax Elementary School at 102-01 Main Street. This was a phase two architectural survey we were able to enter the building and fully document its interior. The primary resource is the school building.

[03:18:59] It's a two and a half story institutional building with three rectangular bays, four course common bond brick built in the neoclassical style between 1923 and 1925.

[03:19:15] The building includes five historic and modern additions, including historic additions on on the south, northwest, and modern two-story addition on the west, added in 1985.

[03:19:41] Although the building's exterior remains largely original in appearance, we found major interior alterations that in our opinion diminished the building's eligibility for listing in in the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria C for Architecture.

[03:19:58] However, we feel that the Fairfax Elementary School is potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A in association with the local and state history of education. The building represents changes in educational practice, national trends in the science of pedagogy and shifting population demographics that spurred frequent additions to the building during its first few decades of use. Lastly we

[03:20:37] surveyed the Germantown Cemetery. We surveyed Germantown Cemetery as both an architectural and an archaeological resource. It's located at 11085 Fairfax Boulevard. This graphic that you see here is based on the ground penetrating radar survey that we did not get into that a bit more in just a minute but all of the the red ovals are unmarked graves and and the blue ovals are marked graves is over appear to be over 500 graves in the cemetery

[03:21:15] Germantown cemetery was established in 1868 43 extant headstones marked the graves of 51 named individuals. Genealogical research conducted by the organization that is currently taking care of the cemetery identified about 180 individuals believed to be interred in the cemetery. And the ground penetrating radar survey that we conducted as part of

[03:21:44] this study indicated that there are 499 unmarked burials in the cemetery. Germantown Cemetery is a well preserved and largely unaltered example of an American of an African-American burial ground dating to 1868 it's possible that it was used earlier than that but you know we know that it was in use by 1868 it contains the graves of several locally prominent individuals who played important roles

[03:22:20] in the reconstruction era African-American community of Germantown Numerous burials within the cemetery have the potential to provide important archaeological data about changes in burial practices amongst the African-American community of Fairfax.

[03:22:37] Certainly in the reconstruction years, but possibly in consideration of its possible earlier use, there's a potential that enslaved people were buried at the cemetery.

[03:22:54] We feel the cemetery maintains its integrity of association design feeling location materials and workmanship although its integrity of setting has been impacted by surrounding development. The significance of the Germantown Cemetery in our opinion considering its historic context and a large number of apparent interments is comparable to that of the Freedman Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia. It's an 1864 African-American cemetery with 534 known internments, encompassing 1.3 acres that was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The history

[03:23:33] of the two resources is somewhat different in that the Freedman cemetery was originally started by the U.S. government for the Freedman population who were working in Alexandria during the Civil War, whereas the Germantown cemetery was formally established by an African American civic group.

[03:23:56] But the Freedmen cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. We felt that this was clearly eligible for listing, although I will mention that cemeteries and other religious properties are generally not considered eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places unless special considerations are applicable and like the Freedman Cemetery in Alexandria, we feel that the historical significance of

[03:24:29] the Germantown Cemetery is transcendent and it is eligible, potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under criterion A. Based on age and association with the original reconstruction era community of African Americans and under criterion D due to its potential to yield important research data about 19th and early 20th century African

[03:25:02] Americans in the German town community. And as Eric mentioned, there are some potential next steps. The city could consider filing a preliminary information form or a PIF with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources for those properties that we are recommending potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

[03:25:34] The PIF is the first step toward listing a property in the NRHP. The Department of Historic Resources takes that information and they review the preliminary information form and then the Department of Historic Resources holds a few times a year they meet to present these properties that are being considered for listing in the National

[03:26:09] Register and make a decision about whether they are eligible and should be forwarded to the keeper of the register at the National Park Service. A couple things about listing a property in the National Register of Historic Places.

[03:26:28] It cannot be done over the objections of the owner of the property. It's necessary that the owner of the property agrees to have the property listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A property that's listed in the National Register of Historic Places does have certain protections that typically only come into play when there is a federal undertaking and a federal agency as required by the National Historic Preservation Act must assess the effects of its undertaking on historic properties.

[03:27:01] This is not a common thing. usually it can come up during applications for wetland permitting federal highway funding housing and urban development loans typically properties listed in the national register of historic places is it would only have certain protections and considerations in association

[03:27:31] with a federal undertaking. Also mentioned that the city's regulatory preservation board is the Board of Architectural Review, and HFCI is an advocacy board, and both would have an opportunity to review and comment and make recommendations about these sorts of next PURSUING NATIONAL REGISTER ELIGIBILITY FOR ANY OF THESE PROPERTIES.

[03:28:10] I THINK THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION, BUT HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE ABOUT ANY OF THESE RESOURCES. THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION.

[03:28:25] IT'S 10:30, SO I'M GOING TO ASK -- I THINK COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER HAD A QUESTION. IT'S LESS OF A QUESTION THAN A STATEMENT. I FIRST OF ALL REALLY APPRECIATE THIS VERY IMPORTANT WORK IN LOOKING AT OUR HISTORY.

[03:28:40] I had a visceral response to the information about the Germantown Cemetery when I came across that image with the 499 unmarked graves. And I just really feel that it's symbolic of so many things, I think.

[03:29:03] And whatever discussions that need to happen in order to explore its designation, I absolutely support that. I think certainly the other work on the other locations is worthy of further exploration and consideration in terms of developmental proposals and that sort of thing.

[03:29:26] This hit me in my soul. So I really appreciate this work. I really appreciate your report. And I just want to thank you for that part in particular. Thank you very much. I was involved in the work at Freedman Cemetery many years ago, and I think it's wonderful what they've done with that site.

[03:29:47] And thank you. Appreciate the... Other questions? Comments? Councilmember McQuillan? Thank you so much. That presentation was very educational and informative, and I agree with Councilmember Hardy Chandler that I, too, would be in support.

[03:30:04] And I felt the same way, you know, reading that 499 people. I mean, that's just incredible. information to come out of that could you elaborate a little bit more on the protections what is what exactly it means again I know that there's a lot of people that aren't sure what what benefits come about when you sure as I as mentioned the the protections are very limited listing a property in the National Register of Historic Places again it must be done you know in concurrence with the owner of the property and the protections are very

[03:30:42] limited and that when a federal agency has an undertaking and that can mean funding or permitting they're required under federal law to assess the effects of their undertaking on properties that are listed or eligible or potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places that's an important point because the property does not need to be listed to receive this measure of protection it can as we have recorded these with the the Virginia Department of Historic Resources along with our recommendations, all of these properties that we've recommended eligible would already receive that basic level of

[03:31:21] protection and that they'd be seen as potentially eligible. When a federal agency has an undertaking, they look at the resources that could be directly or indirectly affected and that includes visual effects and auditory effects by their undertaking.

[03:31:42] If they determine that their undertaking will result in an adverse effect, they'll require mitigation of some type for the project to proceed before they can release the permitting or funding.

[03:31:57] That's pretty much the limitations of the protections afforded. As I said, just by the work that we've already done, these properties do have that measure of protection except for the citizen house. Thank you so much. What's the timeline for if once you submit, how long does it take to get a property registered?

[03:32:20] It depends on when I think that the DHR State Review Board meets twice a year. So it's generally going to be at least six months. I guess if you get in right before that, it could be somewhat less than six months.

[03:32:41] And then, assuming the DHR agrees that a property is eligible for listing, they forward that to the National Park Service, who will also take several months. So I'd say it's generally probably a four-month-to-one-year process, depending on where you fall in the schedule of the various review boards.

[03:33:03] Thank you. I will add one other thing on the topic of protection of some of these sites. There's generally two ways to go from here. which could be either or, one is pursuing the National Register listing, the other is pursuing a city historic district.

[03:33:19] Those two things have different protections. So a city historic district, so if you think about our Olden Historic District or the Museum District, for instance, or Blenheim, that does have more protections than just an NRHP listing alone.

[03:33:37] NRHP tends to be the gold standard for historic properties. A local designation actually can carry protections on town. The Germantown Cemetery, like all cemeteries and burial places, is protected under the Code of Virginia.

[03:33:53] It's a crime to disturb cemeteries. That's good to know. It's really good to know. Anything else? Councilmember Amos? Just can't hear Germantown Cemetery and not shout out.

[03:34:09] Go read Black Communities in Fairfax by some lovely authors that are locally based. Linneal, Taylor, Janae Linder, and them folks. So shout out to them. The Germantown Cemetery Preservation Trust, they've done a tremendous work. Those are the ladies that have been instrumental in highlighting the preservation of the cemetery, and they did write a book, The Black Community in Fairfax.

[03:34:33] So thank you, gentlemen, so much. Ms. Clark, who do we have next? The last work session item is a presentation on currently proposed potential zoning text amendments. Eric Forman, Senior Planner, will provide the staff presentation.

[03:35:06] Okay, well, thank you very much. So this last agenda item tonight, we're talking about some potential amendments to the city's zoning ordinance. These amendments cover several topics. Hopefully, together, they can improve city operations, help us realize some of the goals in our comprehensive plan, make the zoning ordinance administration more efficient for residents, for businesses that rely on it.

[03:35:33] Staff discussed this series of amendments with the Planning Commission in May. Planning Commission did have a few comments, so I'll note those comments in tonight's presentation. And as you may know, our zoning ordinance was extensively updated back in 2016, and that's important.

[03:35:53] But zoning ordinances are routinely amended. Ours has been amended each year since 2016. Now, the amendments that we're talking about tonight include a few topics. So first up are amendments related to accessory dwelling unit occupancy.

[03:36:11] Planning Commission and City Council have both held work sessions on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in general. ADUs overall, this is a complex topic. The City is planning a comprehensive review of ADU regulations over the next year.

[03:36:29] But this one element here of eliminating occupancy requirements for age and disability, this is something that both Planning Commission and City Council identified as a priority. It's something that can be done independently of that larger ADU review.

[03:36:47] So that's the first item that we'll be talking about. The second one here pertains to a few different topics, and these are all under the theme of reducing the need for special use permits. The objective here really is to reduce barriers that business uses that are in practice, low intensity uses face, but that currently require applicants to go through a full special use permit process.

[03:37:16] And then we also have amendments that help with the administration of our ordinance and things to clarify inconsistency and typographical issues and whatnot. So I'll pause occasionally as we go through here. I'll pause at the end of the ADU section and elsewhere.

[03:37:35] So first up is this potential ADU occupancy amendment or amendments. And as I mentioned, that overall topic of accessory dwelling units, that's something that Planning Commission and City Council have discussed, and staff has been asked to take a look at ADU standards in total.

[03:37:54] But there's also some existing standards on ADU occupancy, and like it says here, so both Planning Commission and City Council discussed these occupancy standards at their work sessions. Both bodies saw benefits to eliminating some of these standards, and this particular topic, it's reasonable to address separately from that larger ADU issue because it's a relatively minor change.

[03:38:23] it's a regulatory change it does not involve changing the physical standards of accessory dwelling units doesn't change where they could be permitted it's really intended to remove what folks have identified as a outdated regulatory hurdle for adu occupancy now in in the context of this discussion i think it's it's helpful to very quickly go over what a accessory dwelling unit is. I know we've talked about this before, but in everyday terms, an ADU is a full dwelling unit that's part of another house and is subordinate or accessory to that main house.

[03:39:02] Now, aside from this definition, which you see up here on the screen, there are also use standards associated with ADUs. These are in section 355 of the zoning ordinance, and these set standards for ADUs. So they largely involve physical standards, so things like measurements and whatnot, but they also include standards for occupancy, and that's what we're talking about tonight. So we'll take a look at these occupancy standards that are currently in the ADU use standard subsection. There's three main occupancy standards. You see them here. Really, it's this

[03:39:41] one in the middle that's highlighted. It's this one that we're talking about tonight because, Because again, there's support for eliminating these requirements. So we'll get to the details in a minute, but first I just want to mention this top one here. This is a provision that the owner of the property must live in either the house or the accessory dwelling unit.

[03:40:02] The amendments that we're talking about tonight would not change this standard up here at the top, the owner occupied standard. This one that's highlighted in green here, this is the age and disability requirements and what the requirements mean is that either the main house or the accessory dwelling unit must be occupied by either someone who's age 55 plus or someone with a disability now at at our work sessions for planning commission with planning commission and city council and at our adu community meeting in in the fall there was support for removing these requirements and and

[03:40:42] And the thinking being that it's an unnecessarily restrictive item, it creates a hurdle for landlords and for tenants both, without providing overall benefit for the city as a whole. And the Planning Commission in its work session reiterated that point.

[03:41:00] Now, before we get into the specifics about this, just one word about that bottom bullet point here. You may have noticed in the attachment that we're also recommending changing a detail in this. It says at the bottom here that the ADU and the house are counted together as a single household for determining total occupancy. And total occupancy in this case really means overcrowding. So the reason for measuring occupancy is to minimize the likelihood of houses in general, so not just houses with accessory dwelling units, but all houses, to minimize the chance of those

[03:41:38] being used as high occupancy boarding houses or the like, having to maintain safety, having to maintain neighborhood character, and so on. We are not recommending changing the existing standard, but these amendments do include a text change to remove some outdated language in this subsection, and I'll get to the detail of that in just a slide or two. But with that out of the way, we can move on to looking at the actual amendments themselves. And really, with all that background out of the way, the amendments are fairly straightforward.

[03:42:15] So subsection E here is where all of the occupancy standards reside. You can see that first standard, which is the age and disability, that remains unaltered. Now, under number two here, you see the age requirement and the disability requirement.

[03:42:36] The age requirement is under Romanet 1. A lowercase Roman numeral is called a Romanet. So now you know. After four hours of meeting, you learn something new. Romanet 1 is the age requirement.

[03:42:53] Romanet 2 is the disability requirement. So this amendment proposes to strike all of this language, to delete it. And that's shown on this slide as being the strikethrough. Now, there is a Romanet 3 in this subsection, and that's what involves what I had mentioned about measuring occupancy, that the House and the ADU are counted together for overcrowding standards.

[03:43:20] Now, I mentioned that we're proposing to revise some outdated language in the current text, and this is what I mean by that. The subsection says that the combined occupancy of the House and the ADU must contain one household. The issue is that the term that's actually used in the zoning ordinance text here is family, not household.

[03:43:44] The reason for that is because prior to that 2016 zoning ordinance rewrite, the term family was used in this context. That was changed to household in the definition section in 2016. The text in this particular section was just simply overlooked as far as updating it.

[03:44:05] So this amendment down here, you can see it at the bottom, would change that term from family to household. That makes it consistent with the definition section of the ordinance. And we're also proposing here to eliminate the description of what a household entails and instead simply referring the reader to the definition because that makes more sense as far as structuring the zoning ordinance that you're not repeating something in one section or another.

[03:44:34] So this does not change policy. So this occupancy standard does not, or amendment does not change policy, doesn't change any way of doing things. Like it says here, it simply revises language that's now outdated. So this is probably a good time to pause to see if there's any questions on the ADU.

[03:44:56] We're good. Nice change. Household, much better than family. Proceed. Okay. Proceeding. We can go on to our next group of major amendments, and these are all amendments to reduce the need for special use permits for certain types of businesses.

[03:45:17] Now, all uses are listed in the zoning ordinance's principal use table. There's essentially three types of permitted uses. There are uses that are listed as permitted, and these are allowed in a given zoning district. It's not necessarily a free-for-all when it's allowed because there's frequently use standards associated with uses, and use standards are the rules that need to be followed to make sure that the use is compatible with the city. At the other end of the spectrum are uses that are not permitted

[03:45:52] in any particular zoning district, and these are simply things that are not allowed. But then there's that in-between category, which is the special use permit. So the process for special use permits. It's spelled out in section 6-7 of the zoning ordinance, but it's essentially that a business wishing to operate a use that's considered a special use files an application with the city, and ultimately that ends up with a public hearing before city council. So that process adds complexity, it adds time, it frequently will add cost to the applicant, to the business,

[03:46:27] and that's justifiable in a lot of cases because the purpose of a special use permit is to give City Council the opportunity to exercise discretionary powers and considering whether certain uses that due to their characteristics may have impacts on adjacent properties, may have impacts to the city overall. But requiring that permitting process for businesses that operate largely unobtrusively, that sets up barriers to business creation that don't necessarily

[03:47:00] need to exist. So the next three series of amendments fit into that category. So businesses, types of businesses that currently require special use permits, but tend to be rather unobtrusive uses. And staff feels that the permitting process would work better in these cases without being a special use. And really should be noted that these are cases where business models have really evolved from where they were just even a short time ago. And Zoning ordinances do need to evolve, and especially with common business models, and these are cases where that's relevant.

[03:47:39] So we'll take a look at each one of them here. The first one involves the use that's known as indoor recreation. The use interpretation in Section 3.4 describes this as what you see here, amusement or recreational activities carried on within a building or wholly within a building.

[03:47:58] And this was intended to apply to large facilities that could have unusual operating characteristics or large crowds, so things that would really warrant a special consideration from city council, so bowling alleys, ice skating, health clubs, big health clubs, and so on.

[03:48:19] But what we've seen in recent years is that there has been an increase in the number of smaller types of businesses in this use category. So things like day spas, for instance, it's quite a few day spas in the city that are operating in office condos or office buildings.

[03:48:35] Small gyms is another one. Again, it's not an uncommon type of tenant in shopping centers or other retail-like environments. These types of small businesses, they tend to be unobtrusive in their environments. they tend not to attract large crowds or have disturbances and whatnot.

[03:48:53] And one other thing is that the nature of those types of businesses often overlap with what's considered personal services in our zoning ordinance. So gyms are considered indoor recreation. Fitness centers are considered personal services.

[03:49:09] Health clubs are considered indoor recreation. Dance studios are considered personal services. And that's something that leads to complications on our zoning administrators and about how to classify these businesses when they come up. So the potential amendment here seeks to remedy this situation and does so by setting a minimum size threshold for a use to be considered indoor recreation.

[03:49:37] Sets that standard at 30,000 square feet. So that threshold there, that would maintain the current special use permit status for larger uses, so bowling alleys, skating rinks, big gyms, and so on. 30,000 square feet wasn't just picked out of thin air.

[03:49:56] It's consistent with another part of the zoning ordinance because that is the same threshold for large format retail in the zoning ordinance. So that is likewise a special use, whereas smaller format retail is not. But for those smaller uses, for gyms and athletic places, mixed martial arts, studios, day spas, and whatnot, those would simply be considered personal service uses with this size threshold.

[03:50:26] And on account of that, those businesses would not be required to go through the special use permit process. These amendments, you may have noticed, they also contain some text changes, but it's really that size threshold that's the substantive change here, the intent of smoothing the business process.

[03:50:46] So any questions about indoor recreation? Any questions, Council Member Ramirez? No, I think we got it. I know. I know. Ten minutes, but this is really good, and I think all of us have read through the slides, too, prior to the meeting.

[03:51:03] So just keep going unless somebody has a question, but I think most of us have read through all of the slides at this point. Okay, I'll keep going. Medical care facilities, this is the next potential amendment that involves, this also involves a minimum size threshold.

[03:51:20] Use interpretation of medical care facilities is here, but it's really most helpful to see how this fits in with other medical uses. There's three types of medical uses in our zoning ordinance. On one hand, there's medical offices. These are doctors' and dentists' offices.

[03:51:37] These are permitted in all commercial and industrial zones. At the other extreme, we have hospitals. Hospitals are an intense use, and this is a special use in industrial zones and in the more intense commercial zones. Now, what we call medical care facilities in the ordinance, this is really stuck in the middle.

[03:51:58] The use interpretation here shows this is things like urgent cares and surgical centers. So these really can be more intense than a doctor's office, but really not like a hospital. And as a result of that, these are permitted in the industrial zone and in CG and are a special use in CO and CR.

[03:52:18] Those are the two zones that compromise the bulk of our commercial areas. It's really urgent cares that have become noteworthy here. Not too long ago, urgent care facilities were considered similar to a hospital emergency room.

[03:52:35] So, you know, really an intense medical use. But really over the past decade or so, urgent cares have basically become everyday type of medical care. This is where a whole lot of people go just for common medical care. And not only do urgent cares operate similar to doctor's offices, but a lot of doctor's offices and pediatrician's offices contain urgent care functions.

[03:52:58] So really, these two uses have blended together. So given that, it doesn't seem beneficial to require that urgent care facilities go through the special use permit process when similar doctor's offices do not. So similar to indoor recreation, this draft amendment sets a minimum size threshold for a use to be considered a medical care facility.

[03:53:21] And in this case, the threshold is 10,000 square feet. The reason this number was chosen is because it's really urgent cares that we're looking at here. We looked at about 20 different urgent cares throughout northern Virginia, all different types of settings, some standalone, some in shopping centers, some in office buildings and whatnot.

[03:53:41] The use tends to average about 4,000 square feet. The biggest ones right now are just over 7,000 square feet. So we believe that that 10,000 figure would comfortably include urgent cares. And like with indoor recreation, there would be no change for larger uses in this category.

[03:54:01] So urgent cares or surgical centers that are over 10,000 square feet would still be considered special uses. But staff believes that this change, again, would reduce a barrier that's really become real for a common type of business.

[03:54:22] So we can move on to the last of these amendments dealing with reducing special use permits. So this involves animal care facilities. So you see the use interpretation. This is the current use interpretation for animal care facilities up here at the top.

[03:54:37] It's basically, like it says here, a place where animals are cared for, very broad. So right now, animal care facilities are permitted in industrial and in CG zones and are a special use in those common commercial zones of CO and CR.

[03:54:57] So as it's currently written, this really is a broad use, but it really includes two very different types of businesses, and each one of those has different intensities of impact. And like it says here at the bottom, these two types really boil down to facilities that involve boarding animals and those that involve veterinary care without boarding animals.

[03:55:21] And this creates a situation where two uses with very different types of impacts wind up both being a special use just because they're grouped into the same category. This draft amendment separates those two, so separating them means creating two new use interpretations and also updating the current commercial use standards for animal care.

[03:55:47] So we're recommending standards for those use standards that combine some of the current standards that are in the ordinance right now for animal care, And along with those conditions that have commonly been applied to these uses that have special use permits approved.

[03:56:03] So we'll get to that in a few slides, but for now, really, the most significant recommendation is what you see here. And that is making veterinary clinics, like it says here on the right, permitted in most commercial and industrial zones.

[03:56:20] Now, animal boarding, we really would consider that to be kennels. This would continue to be a special use in the more intensive commercial zones or in the commercial zones. We would recommend adding CU to those zones as well, just because it makes sense.

[03:56:39] And this would continue to be a permitted use in industrial and in CG. This here is the draft use interpretation for kennels. And this, again, you know, basically boarding. A kennel would be, you see it here, an establishment for the keeping or boarding of dogs more than four months of age, free care or daycare, or keeping or boarding of dogs or other pets for breeding, training, sale, or adoption.

[03:57:10] So just a quick note, first line here says that this is related to dogs. The reason for that language is just dogs have certain characteristics that have adverse impacts on surrounding properties. So barking and odor from animal waste.

[03:57:27] Boarding of other pets, so cats, for instance, don't have this characteristic. And the reason that I mention that is that we're recommending adding, like it says down here at the bottom, adding the boarding of other animals to general services. So that means that cat daycares, and there is such a thing as cat daycares, cat daycares would be classified as general services and would not be a kennel type of use.

[03:57:52] I have one question on that. Yes. When you say other animals, you're like, well, dogs and cats. What about horses? Horses, right? Like, what if somebody wanted to stable horses? So I'm not up on the animals so much, but I think the boarding of horses is not permitted in the city.

[03:58:16] Okay. Or not permitted on smaller properties. Okay. We just stick a pin in that. Just stick a pin in that. We say nay to that. It's late, you know.

[03:58:40] So this is the draft use interpretations for veterinary clinics. So use interpretation is here. Again, like it says at the bottom, vet clinics would be a permitted use in CO, CR, CU, CG, and industrial zones.

[03:58:59] So this would eliminate the requirement for vets to go through a special use permit process. Like I said at the beginning, it's not a free-for-all for veterinary clinics because there are animal care use standards. There are currently animal care use standards as well.

[03:59:17] And again, what we're recommending here, we're actually recommending a common set of use standards for both kennels and vet clinics since really the big issues, again, noise and odors, can be consistent with both of these uses when it comes to neighboring properties. So again, these use standards combine some of the current animal use standards with certain conditions that have been applied uniformly with SUPs.

[03:59:44] What you see here are summaries of the actual language. The full text is in your packets. The first two, number one here, requires sound mitigation. Second one requires the operator to control animal waste that's created on the site by the business's customers.

[04:00:01] And this is a common special use permit standard. There are some others as well requiring facilities to include ventilation to control off-premises odors. This is really for multi-tenant type of spaces.

[04:00:17] Four and five relate to outdoor areas, if they're provided. So it says that those kind of areas must be at least 300 feet from the nearest residence and be used during daylight hours. And with that...

[04:00:32] Council Member Hall has a question. Yes? Just this part about outdoor exercise areas are restricted to daylight use. I feel like, are we concerned about a barking dog at night? Yes, that's the concern, and that is currently a standard in animal care facilities.

[04:00:50] And I get that, but I feel like those hours should be more in line with our quiet hours and not daylight. Because does this mean your dog, technically, if you're in one of these places, can't go out past 4 or 4.30 and be barking? So this is just... Sun goes down early? This is just animal care facilities, so it is not something like an apartment complex that has a dog area.

[04:01:13] This is a business that's a boarding facility for dogs, saying that the business cannot use an outdoor area if it has one after dark. Yeah, I would just, understanding that, I'm just thinking of like a vet that does overnight boarding.

[04:01:32] I just think daylight use is very, very restrictive. Let's stick a pin in that. Can we stick a pin in that? We'll look into that. If we come back for a public hearing, we'll have some recommendations on that.

[04:01:49] Excellent. Thank you. Some other topics here. These are not as significant as the others, so I can kind of breeze through these. These are all amendments to simplify the ordinance.

[04:02:05] If you look at the use interpretation for restaurants, this goes on for a page. And the reason it goes on for a page, everyone knows what a restaurant is, but this includes detail of many different types of restaurants. So it says what a fast food restaurant is, what a delicatessen is, specialty restaurant, and whatnot.

[04:02:25] At one point, there was actually a reason for this because before 2016, those different types of restaurants were treated differently from a zoning standpoint. It's not the case anymore. A restaurant is a restaurant. Eighty percent of this is unnecessary verbiage, so we're reducing this to one paragraph that says what a restaurant is.

[04:02:49] Excellent. Next topic is also a matter of clarifying. These kind of donation containers are currently permitted under certain conditions and with use standards, but throughout the ordinance there's different terms that are used to describe these, so sometimes they're described as containers, sometimes they're described as boxes, sometimes facilities.

[04:03:12] and and and that's made confusion for folks trying to understand the city's standards on this topic these amendments standardize all of that text and consistently calls them donation drop-off containers uh it another issue with trying to understand current regulations on this is there's no definition so we propose adding a definition here which you see here one change that we will make going into any public hearings planning commission asked that we come up with another term for recycling containers at the end it says this does

[04:03:48] not include recycling containers the reason is that some of these donation boxes say that they're recycling like recycling clothes or recycling shoes or whatnot so we'll come up with a different term there but that is donation drop-off containers this this is rather obscure for most folks it's a change in state legislation altering um public notification requirements this is the third year in a row that this has been changed uh after i don't know like a generation of not being changed so uh we're

[04:04:23] actually two years behind because what's in the ordinance now is from 2023 uh we're just updating this to match state code so that is that this actually does not change uh what we do because our current advertising fits in with this to begin with. And there are even some more miscellaneous amendments, some incorrect references in the tree removal permit section, some typographical and other formatting issues, and you can see them all in the attachment. And as you may know from

[04:05:00] previous amendment processes, this work session is really the beginning of the process. So as for what's coming next planning Commission can formally initiate the zoning text requirements at a future meeting and once initiated actual public hearings on this series of amendments would occur later on so that that is our zoning ordinance update and five minutes past 11:00 so that's good you did a great job and having the materials ahead of time made a huge difference because I I think we all looked at them, which also helps a lot.

[04:05:37] Burning questions, or Councilmember Peterson? Are we calling for the yeas and nays? No, I think we've done that. Okay. City Manager? If I may, Mayor, just two quick things. I mentioned I sent out the community survey.

[04:05:55] A couple of you had a couple of clarifying things which were helpful that we missed in terms of how it was laid out. But having several of you responded, we're ready to move forward unless there's any need for discussion at a future time.

[04:06:10] Not necessarily tonight, but yeah. I honestly have not had a chance. I've printed it out. I just haven't had a chance to spend the time on it yet. So I'd like to give a couple more days if possible. Feedback by Friday. That's fine. I can do that. No worries. Thank you. I know you all want to get it done, so we're just trying to keep the process moving.

[04:06:29] Okay, well, let's set a deadline Friday. Right. and get back to the city manager and then the uh the thing that just as a prompt the clerk will be sending you all an email we have a retreat you all have a retreat on the 28th want to make sure we have the agenda things that you want a couple of things we are aware of uh charter especially as it relates to the transient occupancy tax i think you all said you wanted to move forward with getting that done if you're going to do that you if there's other charter things we can talk about. We all heard about like rules of procedure that Mr. Amos asked for. So if there are other things, just be on the lookout for that. The clerks will also be sending that. So we just

[04:07:09] want to make sure we have the things that you want to discuss. Thank you. Fantastic. Okay. We are now adjourned, whatever time it is. 11.07. We're adjourned at 11.07.

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