Coraggio Consulting
City of Fairfax City Council Meeting, Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Place: City Hall, City of Fairfax, Virginia
Length: 3h 57m (video)
Official meeting video (city, Granicus): https://fairfax.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4623
Agenda: https://fairfax.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4623
Minutes: https://fairfax.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=13&clip_id=4623&doc_id=357d0c09-8b66-11f1-bb61-005056a89546

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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:02] Good evening. I would like to call the regular meeting of July 28, 2026 to order. If you are able and so choose, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:00:26] I would now like to invite the Parks and Recreation Department to come down for the proclamation acknowledging July is Parks and Recreation Month.

[00:00:46] Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department is dedicated to developing and maintaining beautiful, safe, and environmentally friendly open spaces for the public to use and enjoy.

[00:01:15] Affordable, comprehensive, and amazing experiences, a sense of community that enriches people's lives, contributing to the well-being of the individual, family, and visitors to our city. And whereas a strategic master plan for parks and recreation was passed unanimously by the Fairfax City Council in 2014, committing city resources to ongoing investment in our 25 public parks, walking trails, open space, recreational programming, cultural arts, and events.

[00:01:47] And whereas programming is offered to serve children through camps, older adults through the Senior Center at Green Acres, and classes for all ages held year-round at locations across the city, offering opportunities for educational enrichment, skill building, and recreation.

[00:02:03] And whereas Fairfax City events draw people from all over the region for our Chocolate Lovers Festival, our Independence Day Parade, most years, Fall Festival, and other celebrations including Rock the Block from May to October, all made possible by Parks and Recreation staff and their collaborative partnerships with other Fairfax City departments.

[00:02:25] And whereas cultural arts events such as the Spotlight on the Arts, City of Fairfax band performances, and other theater and dance performances held at venues throughout Fairfax City are facilitated and supported by the work of our parks and recreation staff.

[00:02:41] And whereas environmental sustainability and stewardship is central to our parks, trails, and open spaces, prioritizing a healthy tree canopy and working to implement best practices regarding the planting and care of the city's green spaces. And whereas a vibrant community with events and parks is central to sustaining and growing our economic development, drawing visitors to our city, and attracting new residents who choose to make their home here.

[00:03:09] And whereas playgrounds, ball fields, practice fields, and pavilions within our city provide children and their families a safe, accessible, and well-located area in which to enjoy outdoor play, sports, and celebrations. And whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month, now therefore I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, on behalf of all residents of the City of Fairfax, declare the month of July, with celebrations extending through August, as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Fairfax.

[00:03:47] And I encourage residents and visitors to enjoy all that our city has to offer through our investments made in parks, trails, programs, cultural arts, and special events. Let's give it up for Parks and Rec. Thank you.

[00:04:05] We just want to thank Mayor and Council for acknowledging us through this proclamation. And we are also lucky to work in a community that is so supportive of Parks and Recreation. And our parks, facilities, trails, and programs are so amazing because we have an incredible team. so thank you absolutely and now a photograph all right all right sir everybody squinch it

[00:04:27] not you katie mccammon i need you back here who's taking this

[00:04:58] so katherine mccammon also known affectionately throughout the city as katie mack we have something special for you and let me just start by saying for people who do not know katie mack She has been with us for almost 15 years.

[00:05:22] She started out here 14 years ago, for sure, as a camp counselor, was hired as an intern, was hired in cultural arts and events management, have worked your way all the way up to recreation manager. And in that time, she has committed herself to so many things in this city that are not even part of her job description, which is why today we are going to honor Katie for this right here.

[00:05:51] The beautiful design you saw all over this city for the 250th anniversary, the celebration, was designed by Katie Mack because she is talented. Because she is talented and she is generous and she does things for the city because after almost 15 years, everything she does reflects how much she cares about all of us.

[00:06:12] So, in light, and I'm going to show you this right here because it has the logo on it, Katie McCammon, for your exceptional talent, creativity, and dedication in designing the official logo of the city of Fairfax, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, your contribution will serve as a source of community pride and a meaningful emblem of this historic milestone, helping to unite residents in the celebration of 250 years of history, achievement, and progress.

[00:06:48] Thank you, Katie, for all you do for us every single day, but particularly for your gift and your talent that really set us apart in this national celebration. Would you like to say a few words? Thank you, I guess. None of this was happening, so I appreciate it, and I love working here, so thank you all for everything that you do to support our department and allow us to make all these things happen.

[00:07:13] Okay, now a picture. And a picture.

[00:07:17] Yes, hang on to, for those of you who got a yard sign,

[00:07:57] and for those of you who have T-shirts, you know, the emblems on the T-shirts, hang on to those things. Really, we have the best-looking logo in the entire nation. I feel firmly confident about that. We will now move on to the agenda adoption. Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

[00:08:12] I move to adopt the agenda as presented. Second. Okay. A motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote. Council Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye.

[00:08:29] Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go on to initial general public comment. I had three people sign up by 5 o'clock p.m. today, and I'm going to call the first speaker up, which is Stacey Langton.

[00:08:53] Good evening. In the fall of 2020, this city council apparently went along with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to remove so-called offensive monuments and landmarks.

[00:09:20] They voted on September 15th of that year to remove two U.S. Navy Civil War-era howitzer cannons, which stood on the lawn of the historic Fairfax County Courthouse here in Fairfax City, along with a large stone monument that marked this place as one of the locations of the first battles of the Civil War.

[00:09:40] And it marked the death of John Quincy Marr on June 1st of 1861, the very first Confederate soldier to die at the hands of a Union soldier in the Civil War. That summer, 2020, was the summer of woke when political correctness ran amok nationwide along with all of the looters and protesters of Antifa and other leftist groups who burned the downtown areas of several cities across our land.

[00:10:06] The idea of political correctness is a distinctly communist phenomenon. It was created by the Bolsheviks in 1918 when they murdered the Tsar and the royal family in Russia and took over the government. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin emphasized that strong adherence to the ideology of their new regime was an essential requirement of citizens.

[00:10:26] If you deviated from their political correctness, you would be severely punished. You would lose the ability to buy or sell, and you might even lose your life. The Bolsheviks' promulgation of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto destroyed their society for the next 70 years and starved 60 million people to death.

[00:10:44] Now, here we are, 100 years later, and our country, the one that was founded upon the ideals and the bedrock of personal freedom and liberty, is doing exactly what the communists did. Lenin had an agenda he called the Plan for Monumental Propaganda. His monuments policy called for the removal of all monuments and statues dedicated to the czars as they were of no historic or artistic interest.

[00:11:08] Sound familiar? I believe that was the exact excuse given in 2020 to remove the cannons. Here's a photo of them being taken out under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night. President Trump's March 27, 2025 Executive Order, Restoration of Truth in American History, Executive Order No. 14253, states, we must take action to reinstate pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, or markers that have been removed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.

[00:11:42] I submit to you the general public is now sick of wokeness in society. It is communist in origin, and it is fundamentally un-American, and it is time to put the cannons and the monument back. Thank you. Our next speaker is Melody Bentley.

[00:12:06] Good evening. I am president of the Old Fairfax Muse Homeowners Association, and I would like to address the combined properties proposal for the redevelopment of Courthouse Plaza.

[00:12:25] Our community of 74 townhomes is situated diagonally across University Drive from Courthouse Plaza. Everyone who lives there appreciates the proximity of this plaza, which provides us walkable access to retail, especially the desirable convenience of a nearby grocery store.

[00:12:46] We have a keen interest in any changes to this plaza. We appreciate several things about this new proposal that Combined Properties has submitted. There will be additional retail. The mixed use will provide much-needed housing in our area, and a park is included in the plan.

[00:13:07] However, we have the same concerns now as with the first proposal that Combined Properties submitted and which was detailed in a petition we sent to City Council last September. The building proposal is still six stories. It is two stories taller than the small area plan allows.

[00:13:28] It will dwarf and overshadow the rest of Old Town. A further reason to respect the four-story limitation concerns traffic. University Drive will soon be reduced to one lane in each direction in the vicinity of the plaza to accommodate bike paths.

[00:13:44] It will be quite enough to ask this road to handle the additional vehicles of three stories of apartment dwellers and retail. Five stories of apartment dwellers will introduce too much traffic congestion to this neighborhood. Finally, there is the proposed architecture, which has barely changed from the first proposal.

[00:14:05] It is modern, busy, stark, and depressing with its large swaths of blackfacing. It is a jarring contrast to Old Town and can hardly be considered transitional architecture. I think combined properties is missing a huge opportunity.

[00:14:25] Their site, with its proximity to Old Town, if designed well, could become a locus of downtown activity. Imagine, for example, a public square surrounded on three sides with retail below and apartments above, with restaurants and outdoor seating.

[00:14:43] A public square where community gatherings and events could happen. Then Courthouse Plaza could really live up to its name. Thank you so much for your attention. I appreciate it. Our last speaker under this item is Katie Johnson.

[00:15:04] Katie Johnson, and the clerk has my address. This is a quote from Mr. Cunningham from one of the previous planning commissions. It says, from a perspective of zero residential units, we are now essentially at 2,000 bedrooms in this space with the possibility of adding more.

[00:15:27] Smart growth is just a euphemism for density. And I'm saying, please, please, please, when you are discussing this afternoon or later this evening, the major density projects, I ask that your decisions be made to put everything on hold until the citywide level of service study comes back. It's not prudent to put commitments to things that we don't know how much they cost. We shouldn't be committing our city without fully understanding the true cost and the impacts of them. So also a month's subscription to Capital Bike Share and a

[00:16:02] prepaid MetroCard is not adequate traffic medication. So of those 2,000, if just 15% of those 2,000 bedrooms are school-aged children, that would add $7,159,200 per year to our budget. And that's only going to go up. So please do not sacrifice our little city's cherished community character for the sake of density. So thank you.

[00:16:32] We can move to the Consent Agenda. Are there any questions on any of the items on the Consent Agenda? Are there any items Council would like pulled from the Consent Agenda?

[00:16:49] Is there a motion to approve the Consent Agenda? I move to approve the Consent Agenda, Item 6A through C, as presented July 28, 2026, accompanying motions in the staff reports and the accompanying motions in the staff reports.

[00:17:06] Second. A motion has been made by Council Member Hardy-Chandler and seconded by Council Member Peterson, a roll call vote. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Amos?

[00:17:22] Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go on to consideration of appointments to boards, commissions, and advisory committees. Is there a motion to approve the appointments to boards, commissions, and advisory committees? I move to appoint the following applicants. Board of Architecture Review, reappoint Sucha Kemsuwan as the architect and business representative for a three-year term extending through June 13, 2029.

[00:17:46] Commission for Women, reappoint Amini Bonani for a three-year term extending through July 1, 2029. Reappoint Brenda Coleman for a three-year term extending through June 30, 2029. Commission on the Arts, appoint Kirk Knoll for a remainder of a three-year term extending through December 11, 2026, with an extension of a three-year term extending through July 28, 2029.

[00:18:18] Fairfax Commission on Aging, reappoint Manisha Maskay for a two-year term extending through July 9, 2028. Fairfax County Public Library Board of Trustees, reappoint Suzanne Levy, for a four-year term extending through June 10, 2030.

[00:18:37] Second. The motion has been made and seconded a roll call vote. Council Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously.

[00:18:53] We'll go on to public hearings. The only public hearing tonight is a public hearing and council action on proposed amendments to the Code of the City of Fairfax, Chapter 110, and Parenz Zoning to amend portions of the articles and sections contained therein, including introductory provisions, zoning districts, and regulations and definitions relating to detached accessory dwelling units.

[00:19:18] I'm going to recognize Eric Foreman, our city planner, for the staff presentation. Well, thank you very much. Good evening. This agenda item is a public hearing. It's for a series of zoning text amendments that would permit detached accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in Fairfax City.

[00:19:38] If you recall, City Council held a work session in May to discuss this topic, and at that work session, Council requested that a public hearing be scheduled to consider these amendments, and Council also asked for analysis of certain data requests.

[00:19:55] So tonight's presentation is really in two parts. The first part is an overview of the amendment itself, and this is largely similar to what we had reviewed at the May work session. The second part looks at the specific data requests that council had asked for in May.

[00:20:15] We've held quite a few meetings on the topic of ADUs with various amounts of detail. We held some high-level work sessions and a community meeting in 2024. Last year, we held work sessions with Planning Commission and with City Council where we reviewed options to potentially accommodate detached accessory dwelling units.

[00:20:41] In the fall, Council asked staff to draft potential amendments to modify our existing ADU standards in order to permit detached units. And that's what we discussed back in May, focusing on potential amendment details for detached accessory dwelling units.

[00:21:03] I should mention as well that the Planning Commission held a public hearing on these amendments last month. The Commission recommended approval, and I'll discuss the Planning Commission meeting a bit more in a few slides from now. And as you likely know, accessory dwelling units are currently allowed in the city under certain conditions.

[00:21:25] Specifically, ADUs currently need to be within the home itself or attached rather than detached. ADUs were first permitted in 2003 in Fairfax City. They were at that time considered a special use, meaning that homeowners needed to come to city council and ask for approval.

[00:21:48] That lasted until 2016 when ADUs became a permitted use, meaning that they're permitted with subject to conditions. There also used to be an occupancy limitation limiting ADU residents to seniors or to disabled people.

[00:22:07] City Council removed that provision last year. Now, detached accessory dwelling units didn't just pop up out of last year's work sessions. The comprehensive plan recommends to look at expanding ADUs, and this is important, while ensuring that they do not negatively impact surrounding neighborhoods.

[00:22:32] And like we talked about at our work sessions, this is really the critical element when it comes to creating standards for ADUs. Now, the main characteristics of any amendment to allow detached ADUs would really be physical standards for the structures themselves.

[00:22:51] And there are other elements as well, but these physical standards, these are really key to making this work and reducing any kinds of negative externalities that the comprehensive plan mentions. Like we had talked about in May, the subtlety from a policy perspective is that this is a balancing act.

[00:23:11] So trying to juggle that flexibility, flexibility for property owners, juggling that with the neighborhood impact that that flexibility might bring. So most of the standards that you see here today are similar to those that we discussed in May, and I'll point out where they differ.

[00:23:28] The first of these that we'll talk about is setbacks, and in our single-family zoning districts, the required rear yard setback for most houses is 25 feet. The required side yard varies by zoning district.

[00:23:47] It's 10, 12, or 15 feet, depending on where it is. Now, we had mentioned in our last work session that there are provisions in our zoning ordinance for affordable dwelling units. This was added as part of the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance back in 2020.

[00:24:04] And those affordable dwelling provisions include slightly reduced setbacks from what we call the general or standard setbacks. The rationale is to provide some extra flexibility, but provide that flexibility without overly impacting the surrounding neighborhood.

[00:24:22] And as we talked about in May, these accessory dwelling unit amendments recommend setbacks really that correspond to those affordable dwelling provisions. And for the same reason, this is a way to balance that flexibility to give some preference to accessory dwelling units, but at the same time, keeping the guardrails in place to reduce those negative effects on neighbors' properties.

[00:24:50] So like it shows here, those recommended setbacks, and this is what's in the amendment before you, the recommended setbacks are 20 feet in the rear, so that's as opposed to 25 feet. and about a 20% reduction or about a two to three foot reduction on the side lot line.

[00:25:08] So eight feet in most zoning districts, 12 feet in the RL district. And as we can see on the screen, you can see what it means to ADU placements. In this kind of hypothetical scenario, an ADU could go anywhere in the unshaded area.

[00:25:26] So it can go here or here or here and so on. So like it says here, this looks to balance, again, that property owner flexibility, balance it with potential neighborhood impact. Now, Planning Commission did have a recommendation at one of their work sessions that's been incorporated into this proposed amendment.

[00:25:49] That involves ADUs that might be located on the side of houses where there's enough space to do that. The commission was concerned about the aesthetic effects of having a detached accessory dwelling unit in a side yard and recommended standards to ensure that any side yard ADUs would be located near the rear of the house.

[00:26:11] And that, again, has been incorporated into these recommended amendments. Now, for setbacks in general, I think it helps to show how the proposed ADU setbacks compare with setbacks for other structures. So this shows a sample lot.

[00:26:29] This is in the RH district. It shows three examples of behind-the-house setbacks. On the left here, this is the setback for main dwellings themselves. So if this house's owners were to build an addition or if the house itself were torn down and replaced, the house could not extend into that green shaded area.

[00:26:52] So that's the setback. That's the required yard. Again, four dwellings, four houses. In the middle here, these are the side and rear setbacks for accessory structures, so things like garages. And like it says at the bottom here, these are less intense uses than a dwelling, than a house. And the reason is because no one lives in a garage, no one lives in a gazebo, and so on. So these are permitted to be closer to the lot lines than the dwellings themselves, and in this case, a minimum of five feet from the rear lot line or the side lot line.

[00:27:27] Now, on the right here, this is what's in the proposed amendment for detached accessory dwelling units. And again, this mirrors the ordinance's existing standards for affordable dwelling setbacks. And this recognizes that accessory dwelling units have similar levels of intensity as other dwellings, but it provides more flexibility.

[00:27:51] It provides flexibility by permitting these structures to be a little closer to the lot line than the main house can be. Just one more slide on setbacks here at our fall work session. City Council mentioned that detached ADUs can be thought of as an alternative to building very large houses and that that alternative might be able to fit more appropriately into our neighborhoods.

[00:28:20] And that's a significant guiding principle because these standards view ADUs as that kind of alternative. And importantly, the setback standard that's in these amendments would avoid cases of property owners maximizing both house size and having a detached ADU on the same lot.

[00:28:44] Again, part of that balancing act, this slide shows an example of that. These are two houses side by side on identically sized lots. The house on the left is a newer house. It doesn't completely maximize the buildable area, but you can see it comes somewhat close.

[00:29:01] The house on the right has a smaller overall footprint for the house itself. It has a more open lot. These amendment standards would enable that house on the right to build an ADU. Now, that house on the right could also build an addition. It could be replaced by another house and so on.

[00:29:19] But as it is now, that house could build an ADU in the yard. For the house on the left, these standards basically say that the square footage that could have been used for an ADU has already been used for the house itself.

[00:29:35] So again, avoids the instance of having a maximum-sized house with a detached ADU on the same lot. Now, the other significant physical standard is height.

[00:29:50] There is a good amount of discussion on height standards at the work sessions, the main issue being implications for neighboring properties. These amendment standards set a limit of 20 feet or the measured height of the main house, and whichever is less.

[00:30:08] Now, 20 feet, this is roughly one and a half stories. The intent here is to ensure the detached ADUs don't overwhelm the lots that they're on, don't overwhelm the main house or neighboring properties. And one and a half stories would still provide for design flexibility, provides for the structure's placement on the lot and layout and so on.

[00:30:33] This gives kind of a quick visual representation of what we're talking about. So for a multi-story house like the one on the left, a detached ADU would have a maximum height of 20 feet. So again, that's about one and a half stories. For houses like the house on the right here, houses that are themselves less than 20 feet, the maximum ADU height would be equivalent to the house's height.

[00:30:59] So again, the recommendation in these amendments is that ADU height may not exceed 20 feet or the height of the house, and again, whichever is less. There are some other physical standards that are currently in place.

[00:31:17] These amendments recommend keeping those standards. I won't spend too much time on these right now since we talked about these standards at previous meetings, but these standards are all proposed to remain the same as they are now. You can see here there are standards for accessory structure footprint, also standards for ADU square footage.

[00:31:38] And again, these are recommended to be kept. Like it says at the bottom here, these standards really can work together to account for different sized lots, different house sizes, multiple stories, and so on. The zoning ordinance also has standards on lot and building coverage, so both for lots in general and also for lots with accessory structure.

[00:32:03] so these likewise are proposed to remain the same and you can tell these are all interrelated and again each of these addresses a specific issue the amendments again propose keeping these standards intact moving on to parking as you may recall our zoning ordinance right now does have a standard for adu parking but that standard is based on vehicles that are used by adu residents it's just

[00:32:35] not effective. It's not enforceable. In our work sessions, both Planning Commission and City Council were interested in exploring a different approach to ADU parking. So the standard proposed here takes a different approach. So like it says here, it says that a lot, a property with an ADU, must provide no less than the minimum number of parking spaces that are specified in the off-street parking section of the ordinance, which is Section 4.2. So that standard for detached

[00:33:12] houses and for duplex houses, that standard, like it says at the bottom here, is a minimum of two off-street parking spaces for a house, and that means two driveway spaces effectively. So what that means is that if a house already has at least two driveway spaces, then that house would comply with this standard. Now, some houses don't have a driveway, or like the house that's shown here, have just a small driveway that just fits one car. So in those cases, the house would

[00:33:48] need to be brought up to the city's regular parking standards in order to have an ADU. So this house that's shown here, if the owners were to add an ADU, they would need to enlarge the driveway so that it could fit another vehicle before getting, before the city would issue an ADU permit. The reason for this standard is to not automatically trigger a parking shortage with the addition of an accessory dwelling unit, but still to guard against parking shortfalls where they

[00:34:24] might be more particularly problematic. Now, Planning Commission did express some concern about parking at their public hearing. The concern was that this standard may not go far enough. Planning Commission's hesitation seemed to be that some neighborhoods already have not enough parking, and that adding the possibility of more ADUs might make that kind of situation worse.

[00:34:50] Now, the flip side, and this was discussed at the Planning Commission meeting as well, is that it's tough to make the case that an ADU would generate more parking demand than an addition to a house. So, for example, right down the road from City Hall, we have a house that has 10 bedrooms, for instance.

[00:35:10] That kind of addition can be built without having any parking requirement. So it's a difficult leap to make to say that that kind of thing can be built without a parking requirement, but adding a 500-square-foot cottage in the backyard triggers a parking requirement.

[00:35:27] So there's a lot going on with the parking discussion. A few planning commissioners felt uneasy about this. Now, not enough to suggest changes to the amendments, but just a feeling that there's an existing problem that might be made worse, might be made more problematic, I guess, by allowing detached accessory dwelling units.

[00:35:51] Now, one more topic here, and then we'll move on to some of the analysis that city council had asked for. We had talked before about how to best deal with the potential conversion of existing structures to ADUs, and specifically existing structures that do not meet whatever standards are in place for ADUs themselves, meaning that they would be considered nonconforming.

[00:36:15] So under these proposed amendments, if a property owner would wish to convert an existing non-conforming structure to an accessory dwelling unit, that property owner would go through the Board of Zoning Appeals. And this is the same as we had discussed in May.

[00:36:33] I bring it up because one of the city council's requests has to do with accessory structures. BZA is set up really to handle exactly this kind of situation, special exceptions that can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and this is really the default setup with our zoning ordinance, and there are just so many potential variations of nonconformities like this that it's an issue that's best addressed outside of rigid type of standards. So those are the main standards for what's proposed here in the detached ADU amendment that you have before you. The full

[00:37:12] amendment text is in your packets. Like I said, I went through kind of quickly. I can always go back and explain some more of this. But as I had mentioned, council requested additional analysis on certain topics, and staff has done that analysis. And the next few slides will summarize the results. City council, and again, this is back in May, had asked a few questions regarding potential impacts that detached ADUs may have on real estate

[00:37:44] assessments, so both on the ADU's property itself and also in general or citywide. Like it says up here under direct impacts, when a detached ADU is built, that ADU would be assessed similar to other structures or similar to other additions. And what that means is on a per square foot basis.

[00:38:07] so there's no set amount for valuation. It would vary, like it says here, it would vary based on the details of the ADU itself. Now, counsel also asked if a jurisdiction allows detached ADUs.

[00:38:23] Would that permissiveness result in increased property values citywide? So not just for the properties that have ADUs, but a general increase in property values. The concern here was whether that by enabling property owners to build these kind of structures, would property values increase in general? And really, since there would be a new option for essentially monetizing properties to a greater extent, would that raise property values, raise property taxes, and harm affordability?

[00:38:57] Our real estate staff examined this question, determined that across the board, property value impacts due to a detached ADU ordinance is not something that we would expect. Now, to reach that determination, our assessor's office reviewed existing studies on ADUs, did not find evidence of this kind of effect. They also conducted their own local analysis, so based on Arlington County.

[00:39:27] Arlington is the jurisdiction around here that's had detached ADUs for the longest. Like it says here, our staff, again, the real estate staff, analyzed neighborhoods in Arlington that have had detached ADU property sales. So properties that have detached ADUs and have sold, analyzed these neighborhoods over a five-year period. And the finding was that the general property appreciation in those neighborhoods tracked extremely close to the countywide average for appreciation. And

[00:40:02] countywide is Arlington County, because that's what this is looking at. So by extremely close, I mean within one-tenth of one percent of the countywide average. So these neighborhoods actually went down by one-tenth of one percent, but really that's so close to the baseline that we would consider it, like it says down here, just not indicative of ADU influence. Just to put it in a dollar amount, that one-tenth of one percent, which we would consider really a plus or minus, This is about $10 in property tax payments.

[00:40:41] Another request from city council was to see for other northern Virginia jurisdictions or jurisdictions that have already approved detached ADU ordinances, how many of these units have actually been approved within those jurisdictions.

[00:40:57] The most instructive localities around here are Arlington and Alexandria. Both of those have had permitted detached ADUs now for five or seven years. You see the numbers up here. This is the number of permits issued.

[00:41:14] What's perhaps most instructive here is the average annual number of permits issued. And you see that here it's 11 in Arlington County, and this goes back a five-year period of 2021 to 25. 14 annual average in Alexandria.

[00:41:33] And you see at the bottom how that translates into annual permits per 1,000 homes. So that's helpful because it accounts for the difference in size between the jurisdictions. Now, council also asked for information on Falls Church and Fairfax County.

[00:41:53] Fairfax County allows detached ADUs right now on properties that are larger than two acres. The county has issued 10 permits for these types of ADUs since 2021. Falls Church is the most recent jurisdiction locally to allow detached ADUs.

[00:42:12] They have issued one permit so far. Now, that number per 1,000 houses, if you take these two numbers that are on the screen for Arlington and Alexandria, if you combine those two with Fairfax County, so again, two plus acres, but Fairfax County has 7,000 homes over two-plus acres, so that's a pretty big data set.

[00:42:37] If you take the ADUs per 1,000 houses, apply that to the city of Fairfax. I hate to make direct comparisons because each jurisdiction is different, but that would get us in the area of about 50 detached ADUs over a decade.

[00:42:57] Now, I said I'm a little bit uncomfortable saying that, but of course I just said it. I'd give it a bigger window, I'd say a few dozen over a decade, make that a pretty big plus or minus. But hopefully that gives some kind of indication of the prevalence of detached ADUs locally in northern Virginia in places where they're allowed.

[00:43:24] Another question, like I had mentioned before, involved existing structures. Council wanted to know, just as a frame of reference, how many of these kinds of structures are in the city right now. So for this, we looked at property records. We looked at all existing residential structures, so of all types, not just garages, but any structure with a minimum of 350 square feet in size, which are more likely to be converted to ADUs.

[00:43:56] In total, there are slightly under 400 of such structures in the city right now on residential lots. About a quarter of those, or like it says up here, 104, are within what we would call the buildable setback area for detached ADUs.

[00:44:14] So if you think back to the previous slide with the green area, that would be outside of the green area. So 104 are within that buildable setback area. The remainder are, like it says here, outside of that buildable area.

[00:44:30] So that gives some kind of an idea of the number of these structures in the city. It is very important, though, the point that's at the bottom. We can examine the number. We can examine the size and the placement of these structures. But like it says at the bottom here, not all of these are really convertible to someplace where people would want to live.

[00:44:50] So either from the standpoint of the type of construction, the foundation, the cost of modifying the structure, and so on. So just an important thing to keep in mind. It's something that's non-quantifiable, but we gave you here the information that can be quantified on the number of existing structures.

[00:45:12] Now, finally, there were some questions about the permitting process, and specifically whether the city, the main question that came up in May's meeting was whether the city would verify that properties containing detached ADUs are, in fact, owner-occupied.

[00:45:30] It is required. It's required in the zoning standards. It's a current requirement that we're recommending to keep in place that the property owner live in either the main house or the accessory dwelling unit. Now, first of all, city staff will update the permit procedures if detached ADUs are allowed by city council, so this will be updated.

[00:45:54] And one area where detached ADUs would differ from attached ADUs is that they would be subject to the city's rental occupancy permit program. So this is a program, it's an existing program in the city where rental houses are registered and are periodically inspected.

[00:46:14] Because detached ADUs are separate structures, they would be made part of this program. And those periodic inspections would include a verification that the property is owner-occupied. So this is not a verification that would happen on an annual basis.

[00:46:37] It's a verification that would happen when the property is inspected. But that is one additional level of check that would not ordinarily be there. And aside from that, city staff would still be able to respond to complaints about potential zoning violations, and that includes potential occupancy violations as well, as is currently the case.

[00:47:04] So that concludes staff's presentation for tonight. I had mentioned that the Planning Commission held a public hearing on these amendments in June. The Commission recommended approval. It was a unanimous recommendation. The Planning Commission did express some concerns about parking, like I had mentioned.

[00:47:23] The Planning Commission also expressed some concerns about overcrowding and occupancy enforcement. So regarding overcrowding and occupancy, some of that discussion pertained to whether, you know, really similar to the parking issue.

[00:47:39] whether the option of having detached accessory dwelling units would make existing overcrowding issues worse and whether the city's enforcement mechanisms for all rentals were sufficient to be on guard for overcrowding types of situations. Some of the discussion really drifted into a more general overcrowding and inspection type of discussion. Planning commissioners did realize that that's somewhat outside of the boundary of what's being discussed here, you know, with a specific focus on detached ADUs.

[00:48:18] So outside of the boundary of these amendments, but it was identified as a concern by several planning commissioners, and there was a bit of a discussion on this topic at the public hearing. So with that, we'd be glad to answer any questions that you all may have.

[00:48:34] Thank you so much for the presentation. Council Member McQuillan. Thank you. Thank you so much. that presentation was fantastic. I am looking at slide five about the setbacks. Can you explain why eight feet versus 10 feet was chosen for the ADUs? So we did want to align it with the existing affordable dwelling unit setbacks. You know, the affordable dwelling unit setbacks were put in place, again, to give a little bit more flexibility to something that was considered

[00:49:09] desirable, but to still maintain neighborhood character and maintain a decent amount of separation between one property and the other. Eight feet was considered to be appropriate with the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance that achieves the same type of goal that we're looking at with accessory dwelling units.

[00:49:29] Okay, so for the flexibility, just the extra flexibility. Additional flexibility while keeping those kind of guardrails, not letting these dwellings and the dwellings have a higher bit of intensity than other structures, not letting those dwellings being too close to the property line.

[00:49:46] Thank you. I was just curious as to why they didn't choose the 10-foot like they do with the – but it sounds like they need more flexibility. Was there consideration regarding topography of the lot? And we're discussing the height.

[00:50:03] I'm thinking about the height and how you mentioned you didn't want it looking over or looming onto the permanent dwelling that's there already. So was that already taken into consideration? As far as height, yes. And that's part of the reason why the recommendation was 20 feet, was basically one and a half stories instead of two stories, because if it is built on a hill, that one and a half stories would look more, would look bigger than one and a half stories.

[00:50:31] We didn't want anything too large. two-story accessory dwelling built in that situation on a hill would just be too looming. So one and a half felt that was perfect. Okay, good. So you did consider that. So as far as that kind of topography, yes. The kind of topography that we just can't consider is if a certain portion of a yard is sloping to the point where it makes construction difficult.

[00:50:57] On a map like this, it might seem like there's plenty of room to build an ADU, but there may not be. Same kind of thing with trees in the way in that there are certain types of things that we just can't account for. Topography and trees are two of those. Thank you. I just want to make sure that that was considered exactly what you said with, you know, if the lot was increasing in height in the back. Is there a financial cost for the applicant to convert the existing structure to an

[00:51:28] ADU conversion? There is a zoning permit cost, which I believe is $70 or so. Now, depending on what is required, there would be inspections from code administration as well. These things would really pale in comparison to the actual cost of construction or the cost of providing utilities and whatnot. It is a minimal city cost to some of this, but it's very small in the overall picture.

[00:52:03] Okay, good to know. And then of the local cities that you used to make a comparison, which one most closely aligns with the ordinance that were currently being presented this evening? I would say Arlington and Falls Church would most closely align. Alexandria is much more permissive in terms of setbacks and i think that has to do with the types of houses and the types of neighborhoods they have in alexandria and a lot of existing structures that were built long long ago uh and and are already there uh but arlington and false torture excellent thank you

[00:52:41] that's all my questions i appreciate it council member amos thank you uh excellent presentation the more comment than question the only thing i would flag i do echo the planning commission's concerns with parking. And I know that came up in our one-on-ones as well. And I imagine that's a concern that many of us share. The main thing I would recommend, just because it's very, and I do appreciate the language you added to make it more enforceable. I think that does a good job. I would just recommend tracking code violations over a certain period of time. And similar to that, tracking the number of permits that are applied for and comparing the two. We also don't want it

[00:53:20] It'd be a case where we have a certain number of violations, but they're all attributed to similar properties or one or two outliers. By code violations, what kind of code violations do you have? Rather than code violations, just violations, for example, for not providing adequate parking or over-parking in certain areas.

[00:53:41] So applications that trigger that need for an additional parking space? Correct. Okay, yes, gotcha. Council Member Hall? Thank you, and thank you for the extra time and energy that went into asking or answering the questions that we had posed previously and the other concerns.

[00:53:58] So I'll be honest, I thought you were making a mistake when you called them affordable dwelling units, but then you made a reference between 8 feet and 10 feet for affordable dwelling unit versus accessory, detached accessory dwelling units. So I've been over here trying to do some additional research, but can you?

[00:54:13] There is an affordable dwelling unit ordinance. Folks aren't very familiar with it as it pertains to single-family houses because we haven't had anything like that since 2020 when it was approved. But the affordable dwelling ordinance that you all are more familiar with requiring a certain percentage of 6% of multifamily residences be affordable.

[00:54:34] There is an equivalent for detached homes as well. And just like the building standards were relaxed a bit for the affordable dwelling units in multifamily, they were relaxed a little bit for single family as well.

[00:54:54] And that was increasing the setbacks or decreasing the setbacks. Okay. So that's where that comes from. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. I feel like we need new acronyms that are not identical. Excuse me.

[00:55:12] Page 7, with regard to the parking, I do, I know we like to think that people are going to bike everywhere and walk everywhere and take shuttles, but I really have concerns about the parking, especially in neighborhoods that already have, you know, parking issues.

[00:55:28] I don't think it's too much to ask to move this to three spots as opposed to two spots. I think the picture that's on slide 11 is kind of a prime example. As you were saying, you know, there's a requirement to do this for the two required spots. I was thinking to some of the neighborhoods that are in the city where they don't have a driveway at all or they have a short driveway just like that.

[00:55:48] And I was like, well, those don't – that's not how things are right now. So I recognize that it would need to be brought up to code in order to do that. But I don't think it will hurt in most cases to add a third spot instead of just two. And then page 11, I think – oh, sorry, that was the same thing.

[00:56:07] Yeah, bring up to code for two spots. And I'm, okay, so I'm flipping back and forth a little bit between the staff report and the presentation. So on page eight of the presentation, it talks about the height of the houses here.

[00:56:27] So I think, you know, in the city, we have a lot of houses that might not be cookie cutter in some ways, or they might have like my house specifically, we have, you know, we put in like 16 foot ceilings, which you don't see from the outside, because it looks like the same height. But then in the front, when we did our garage, we did a peak, I guess, whatever. I don't know what it's called. Like the one roof goes this way. The other one goes that way. Hipped, I think. Yes. Thank you.

[00:56:52] A hip. Yes. How, how do those hips get decided? Like what's the height that you're looking at when you see a tall portion of a house versus the majority of the roof is another height? How does that work? So a hip roof and a regular peak roof are measured the same way that the height is measured halfway between the eave and the peak. So in this case, a house can be 35 feet tall.

[00:57:19] That 35 feet is not measured to the peak. It's measured to the halfway point between the eave and the peak. Same thing with the 20 feet here. It's measured halfway between the eave and the peak and also halfway between the slope of the ground, if the ground slopes. It is a complicated procedure. We don't feel that it's something that we're dumping on residents as much because if you have one of these built, you have an architect who has to take those measurements in all cases so the same architect can take measurements of the house as well. It's not a bit of information

[00:57:56] that property owners would tend to have at the ready for their own property, but it's something that in the course of construction is routine. Okay, and so then let's picture that you have a lot where the back is significantly higher or lower. How does that factor into the roof of that space?

[00:58:15] So the measurement is taken, if the ground slopes like this, the measurement is taken from the halfway point of the high point and the low point of the structure. So the halfway point of the ground to the halfway point of the roof. Okay. So that's your 35 feet or your 20 feet.

[00:58:31] Okay, so let's say my house out front is normal when it comes to my neighbors, but then my yard significantly goes up. Am I going to be able to build a house that is as tall as my house, which means now this house in behind is significantly taller? Or am I limited to the height even with the additional hill in the back?

[00:58:52] So if your house is on a slope and if the measurement for your house comes out that your house is 25 feet tall, for instance, the maximum height of the ADU would be 20 feet because that's the tallest that it could possibly go.

[00:59:09] Okay. So I understand you're explaining the same thing to me multiple times in different ways. I'm still not visually. Height measurement is not easy to understand. No, it's not. The two structures would be measured independently of each other. So if your house is measured at over 20 feet, your ADU could be a maximum of 20 feet, regardless of what the topography is.

[00:59:36] Okay, so it is possible then if you have a very large hill in the back that your secondary ADU could be significantly taller than your front house. That would be extremely unlikely. I don't want to say it can't happen.

[00:59:54] Okay. I feel it would be very unlikely. It would be a, you know, like if you had this house on the right and then you had the property sloped down a lot in the back, then you may have a situation where that looks the case, but it would still have to keep to 16 feet. And the reason that we have it as, the reason we have it as that is to build in some additional flexibility because we didn't want houses we didn't want a situation where a house where an adu would have to be an

[01:00:33] unreasonably small number right and but on the flip side we also don't now that this house is going to be significantly closer to a side yard right we also don't want it to be towering over where the front house wasn't already just because of a topography thing so correct just trying to understand that those nuances okay on in the staff report I think this is on page six item L it's on page seven it talks about the zoning administrator may

[01:01:10] inspect the property if there is a complaint registered with the city or if the official has other reason to believe that the owner occupants are in violation of the accessory dwelling unit approval from what I understand of our enforcement abilities, there's not a lot of teeth to them. And I totally support people's right to do what they want with their own houses, but I also don't want to see that right impede upon their neighbors. And so I know we've had issues in the past where we as a council have been notified that, you know, there might be X number of people living in a house and they're like, no, it's

[01:01:46] boyfriends, girlfriends, but they're really there all the time, but they don't qualify as house residents but there's a parking situation that comes or other things that come with that so i i would like to see a little bit more enforcement ability whether or not we have enforcement power or enough staff members to do that i think that's likely not going to be something that we need to add in order to manage this but that's those are part of my concerns um the next one also goes then to item N as in Nancy, where it talks about if there's a change, sorry, they took that

[01:02:23] out, if an accessory dwelling unit no longer complies with the conditions, then the use of the space as a separate dwelling unit shall cease, the physical arrangement of the space that created an independent housekeeping unit shall be integrated into the primary dwelling unit, and the space shall not be independently leased as a separate dwelling unit.

[01:02:43] Again, I feel like that's something where we tell someone they can't do something because they violated a rule or you know an ordinance but again we don't have a lot of ability to go back and actually follow up on it so i just think there needs to be something in there that's a little bit stronger because from what i understand if we go and we knock on the door and no one answers well we might go back another day and no one answers again legally and we shouldn't have the ability to enter their yard to do things but if they're not complying with something it seems like there needs to be some other way to have some additional enforcement. So I'm not suggesting, you know, I

[01:03:22] mean, tax levies, like there's all these different things that people can do, like they boot your car, right? Like all those things that they do when you don't pay your parking tickets. I just think that there needs to be some other conversation that is in place to be able to move forward with this. And that's not dissimilar to the conversation the Planning Commission had last month. It just, And, you know, we reminded Planning Commission of this as well, and occupancy enforcement is awfully tricky from the city's perspective because there's no way to check on the occupancy of a dwelling without having city staff go into that dwelling and look at the beds and look at the bedrooms.

[01:03:58] And that's something, obviously, that's not taken lightly by the city. There's just no other way of doing it. So it does kind of, you know, wander into another discussion on occupancy in general, but it's a pertinent discussion.

[01:04:14] Yeah, well, I know like with the noise ordinance, right, if you're not getting the response you need and the neighbor is still continuing to do things, there's an option now to go to the courthouse and swear out a warrant and go that legal route. Obviously, a disgruntled neighbor is not going to be able to go and swear out a warrant against their neighbor for not having the right number of people in their house or whatever it is.

[01:04:34] So I just think some of these things are just a slippery slope, and I think the more we can be on top of them and try to have stronger language where needed, again, just gives us a little bit more opportunity to have that conversation rather than realizing it was too soft and then we can't go back and do anything about it.

[01:04:55] My other question about that section N, it talks about when the, I'm sorry, it was section K, talks about they do an initial inspection of the accessory dwelling unit. And then in addition to any renewal of the accessory dwelling unit, use or transfer of ownership.

[01:05:13] So when would a renewal apply? Are people applying for an ADU for one year, three years, five years? Or it's for the life of their property in which they live, and then it transfers to the new owner? I think the renewal applies to the transfer of ownership.

[01:05:31] I'm not sure why it's written as an or situation. Okay. The zoning permit, the applicant signs an affidavit acknowledging that it has to be renewed when the property transfers. Okay. I will say the wording of this made me think, and I guess similar to what the Planning Commission was saying, and I also, you know, I think people are landlords for a very long time and people don't always check up on the house or make sure that it's being maintained in the way that it should be, especially when you might have college kids renting and there's a lot of transiency and things like that.

[01:06:03] But maybe we do, as a separate conversation, need a little bit more of a stronger conversation around making sure that when a tenant takes possession of the home, that it really is truly in a good, safe, rentable, smoke detectors are working, all of that kind of thing.

[01:06:21] I know that they pay an annual fee to have a rental unit, but I think we could potentially be doing our renter as a disservice by not making sure that things were up to date. I know they used to do it in college and all that, so it's just a thought. Page 17.

[01:06:43] I guess I already asked this, which is how do we respond to a violation if no one answers the door? Okay. And then my last question, and I've been asking this since I think the beginning, is why are we so afraid of doing this by special use permit?

[01:07:01] I recognize that we think there's only going to be a handful. You said that there might be, did you say 50 over 10 years? Right. Okay, so we're doing special use permits for chickens. We're doing them for daycares. This to me is something that it impacts you as a homeowner that lives there, but it also impacts every neighbor that's around you.

[01:07:23] And I know that when we were doing our renovation and we wanted to get an exception to the, which is now it's even smaller than what we asked for, but for the side yard, I mean, we had to send out certified postcards and have all of our neighbors not really have a problem with it and have that conversation.

[01:07:39] To me, this is a really big decision that you are making as a homeowner that is impacting all of those around you. And I would have a much easier ability to accept this if it was by special use.

[01:07:56] But just willy-nilly by right, I think I'm hopeful that there's not going to be an extraordinary amount of these, but I don't think it hurts to do the special use. I think it makes sure that we just have that extra layer of, you know, rubber stamping it essentially to make sure that it is what it is.

[01:08:13] And I think it gives, like I said, the neighbors around them a real opportunity to understand what's going to be happening next to them and what they're going to be living next to. So I would really, really like to see that added in here. I think the aversion to having ADUs be a special use permit, just drawing back to 2016 when that was discussed because ADUs used to be a special use permit, I think council felt uncomfortable about having individual homeowners come to a meeting like this at city council to explain improvements that they wanted to do in their home while other, you know, a brand new home could be built,

[01:08:53] three-story, 35-foot-high, 5,000-square-foot home could be built without coming to City Council, but adding an accessory dwelling unit brings people to City Council to a meeting like this. This was before chickens?

[01:09:10] Before the chicken. I think the thought is that Council doesn't necessarily want more individual property cases coming to public hearings like chickens. i think this council member does to be totally honest um and i you said back in 2016 when they did this but we didn't have detached accessory dwelling units we had attached accessory dwelling units so you're saying that that um requirement was removed in 2016 for attached dwelling units

[01:09:45] correct okay and i understand too what you're saying about tear down and build a 35 foot house I mean, I think we've all seen the one on Warwick. But again, I think you have very angry neighbors that are really unhappy with what happened there. So I think if we're really only expecting 50 over a 10-year period, to me, check the box.

[01:10:07] Special permit, special use permit, easy breezy, and we get it going. So I'm not sure that I can support this without that. Thank you. Council Member Bates. So with regard to height, well, actually both height and setbacks, the requirements that are proposed here are actually more strict than the existing requirements for non-dwelling unit accessory structures.

[01:10:37] Is that right? Correct. Yeah. And then, which, you know, also certainly don't require any additional parking. Granted, they don't have anybody living there, but, you know, and additionally, residents are able to, as you mentioned, build additions onto their house, add additional bedrooms, and then, of course, we have attached accessory dwelling units allowed.

[01:11:04] And so really, to my mind, this is taking what is already allowed and providing some simply additional flexibility in terms of where it can be located, and perhaps even additional flexibility to allow for it to be even less overwhelming to the existing structure, since it can be separated a bit from the existing house.

[01:11:26] And additionally, as you mentioned, someone can build a house without a permit. And, of course, we've seen additional houses built on lots that have been subdivided and sold off.

[01:11:46] And so this, to my mind, also provides an alternative to that that is perhaps a bit less disruptive you know, or less impactful to the, you know, the streetscape, the existing aesthetic of the property. And with regard to the question of requiring a special use permit, would that require the applicant to pay the special use permit fee as well? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So I have concerns

[01:12:21] about that given that you know for chickens for daycare you know that kind of thing you know certainly you can say that you know hens produce eggs daycare provides an income stream but it's not something that is directly necessity for the you know the people living there necessarily but of course housing is for the you know the people who live in the accessible dwelling unit itself

[01:12:51] And so from a housing availability perspective, I would have concerns about the burden that that fee might place on people who want to do this. And also I would imagine that the process for that would be a lot more labor intensive, right, than, you know, for chickens or daycare because it's a matter of building an additional structure on the lot.

[01:13:18] So there would be, you know, a process involved for that. so um yeah and then again you know parking um we can you of course an additional house on you know subdivided lot does require additional parking but other than that um you know additions or uh attached dwelling units i believe are under similar conditions they have to fulfill the parking requirements for you know the house um but don't have to add additional spots for those is that right yeah so from that perspective I see what's proposed as

[01:13:57] really only fair to the homeowners in the city councilmember Hardy Chandler so I want to thank you for the report and I also want to thank you for certainly following up on the wide array of questions that we had I know I was particularly interested in looking at our neighbors and what's happening around there I was surprised at the low numbers that are pretty consistent across this region so we're talking about 50 possibly 50 over the course of 10 years when we go back to the

[01:14:33] parking is there any indication that the existing dwelling units that are attached are they clustered in our city in any way or are they spread dispersed throughout our city right they are spread out there's about two dozen or or so and and there's no neighborhood pattern no geographic pattern to where they are and and there's the expectation that this would follow that same pattern or there's no information to indicate that these might be just clustered in one neighborhood causing some

[01:15:06] kind of parking problem for at five a year right there's no there's not a unique enough element to to say that certain neighborhoods would only you know be suitable for these or not yeah and i go back to just sort of our general desire to have a wide variety of housing options and our policy or our desired policy or aspiration of wanting to have people who are single family owners, accommodate renters, those kinds of things. I see this as another viable option. It

[01:15:41] isn't a huge option. Clearly the data that we requested looking at the region shows that this is a possibility for some but it opens up an opportunity for some families i know of a neighbor who has an attached dwelling unit and the prior owner of the house is living in that and her children are living in the main house it's a wonderful arrangement these kinds of opportunities for homeowners are ones that i absolutely support we're not talking about large volumes we're not

[01:16:15] talking about you know every household having a hill that's going to distort the height but I do think we're talking about an opportunity that's going to make a major difference for families that choose this option so thank you for your report I appreciate all of the information that you gathered to answer our questions councilmember Peterson so what is the list of different permits that a homeowner would have to obtain to actually put in place a detached ADU?

[01:16:55] From a zoning perspective, there would be a zoning permit, and then there would be code administration building permits as needed, so just like any other construction project. And that is the equivalent of a construction permit? Correct. Okay, so those are two.

[01:17:12] All right, just I think one quick note on the special use permit question. One thing that seems a little bit different here is a detached ADU has proximity implications for neighbors that are different than an attached ADU, and that may raise the bar a little bit in terms of reactions that people have in terms of something being proposed and built, so it's probably worth considering as we think about whether or not a special use permit is something that we should do.

[01:17:44] I would like to go back to the parking issue, and I know we've said a lot about it, And I just want to say also I appreciate very much we had an opportunity to have some staff briefings on this and had some conversation around street parking. And I'd like to go back and just understand there's a potential, at least in some places, that there's a risk that the amount of street parking would increase in certain locations.

[01:18:11] It could be for a couple different reasons. There just isn't sufficient expansion capacity on the lot, whatever. What's the remedy if that does appear to be the case? So a remedy from a neighborhood perspective would be to petition the city for a parking district.

[01:18:29] So that would be if a neighborhood has a parking problem that is the remedy that the city has established. Is that the answer that you're looking for?

[01:18:46] Well, I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm just needing to understand for those situations where that could be a problem, where that goes in terms of being able to address it. I'm not sure what's involved in becoming a parking district, but I just wonder, maybe this gets back also to the question, Mark, about a special use permit.

[01:19:08] Is that a way in which that kind of a situation would be caught and addressed? Is that one of the options for that or no? I suppose that's a consideration that council could use in a special use permit situation if it was a special use permit.

[01:19:30] Okay, and the issue is not that there would be so many detached ADUs in one place that it would contribute to volume. The issue is more site-specific where you'd have a circumstance where there just isn't a configuration for off-street parking sufficient, so you're forcing it on street where you already may have it, so it stretches that.

[01:19:48] Yeah, so the special use permit being at the discretion of council, council can pick and choose. And that's the plus and that's the minus of the special use permit. You know, the plus side is the council can make that spot determination. You know, the downside from a homeowner's perspective is the unknown that they have to go to city council and petition for this to be done.

[01:20:12] Right. If I could just switch gears to the numbers game a little bit. I think the thank you for doing the assessments there are two of them that I think we asked for that very helpful one is the effect on property assessments for people who choose not to build just because the legal option is created it looks like that's a non-issue but there's a little bit of a caveat in that I think our comparative data on this is coming from places that are inside the

[01:20:51] beltway predominantly the outside the beltway with fairfax county is a little bit different because those are two acre lot minimums so we're a little bit different territory sounds like it doesn't look like there would be an issue here but i just want to note there's a little bit of variation in the data sources here the other thing is the numbers and if i understand at the end of the day our best estimate again with some of the same uncertainty because of apples and oranges here. We're looking at like maybe five a year. Is that where this landed? Right. Okay.

[01:21:28] Helpful to know for a couple different reasons. It doesn't look like there is likely to be a land rush, but it also looks like five a year is a manageable number if it was determined that we did need to do a special use permit so it wouldn't be an overwhelming surge. I'm not arguing for or against at this stage, except I'm sympathetic, to the concerns that arise and lead to the need possibly for a special use permit here.

[01:21:57] I think the other thing that when we discussed this was just helpful to know is this, while we do have attached ADUs, we have a lot of experience with that, the detached ADUs are a little bit different ballgame, not exactly the same, and it sounds like there is some merit in taking it a step at a time in terms of how we implement a new policy so that we are going through a process of discovery in terms of how this works and being cautious at the early stages until we get a better feel for what we are really in for in terms of the volume, the complexity, the impacts, and all that. I don't want to overplay it because at five a year it doesn't

[01:22:36] sound like a big deal. On the other hand, it does sound like it would be prudent to approach this in a way that is a little bit step at a time and helps us get the feedback we need to determine whether or not and at what point this can be a more automated, if you will, approach to this.

[01:22:54] That would argue, again, back for at least considering the possibility of a special use permit in the early stages to see how this goes. But I did want to just bring that conversation forward because I appreciate the fact that we talked about that and that from a policy implementation perspective that it's almost like treating this as a pilot and taking some special care in its early stages otherwise uh do want to thank you for all of the work that you've done here there's been a lot of assessment it's been responsive and there's been a lot of work done on both the design and the assessment

[01:23:33] side of this that i think has been very helpful so much appreciated thank you councilmember hall thank you excuse me thank you i just had one follow-up question um i just did a quick search and it looks like the special use permit is six hundred dollars does that sound okay that might might be correct I'm not okay certain offhand okay yeah no I just wanted to see what it was and I also did some additional research and it looks like to build a 400 square foot house you're looking between 175,000 and 275,000 dollars and to build an 800 to a thousand square foot ADU

[01:24:07] looking at 300,000 to 450,000 so I do recognize that 600 is an extra fee but I feel like for people that are likely going to be doing this $600 is kind of a drop in the bucket with all of the other costs so I still strongly support a special use permit thank you thank you for the presentation I do agree it was thorough and you did answer questions that previously came up in the work session as far as the parking goes there is a parking problem we have a lot of rentals in the city that have college students in them and there's no mechanism for

[01:24:43] enforcing limitations on how many vehicles a rental can have so what we're basically saying is if there's a parking problem in a neighborhood because we have a rental with no mechanism for limiting the number of vehicles whether it's three four five or six instead we're going to put the burden on an adu to meet these requirements we have a parking issue i grant you but but giving a free pass to renters in this city and putting the burden on renters of an adu or even not even renters because i think we're overlooking the fact that a lot of these adus may be for family

[01:25:21] use and they're not rental properties at all i don't think there should be a greater burden on properties with an adu than we are placing on lots of rental properties that have lots of vehicles so that would be my feedback on that um and as far as is the buy right use of a of building an ADU, the city is full of yards that have sheds and garages and lots of external uses that are the basic footprint, maybe not the height of the square foot, but the basic footprint of what we're talking about with an accessory dwelling unit.

[01:25:55] And while there might not be people living in there, the fact of the matter is the city is full of yards that have sheds and garages in them. And no one came to us to ask if we like the design or the location or anything else. We can do it by right. We can boot by right because we own the property.

[01:26:12] And so I do have an issue with thinking that this dais or any dais or every dais that's elected every other year should have an up or down vote on what people want to build in their yard because we don't do that for the other structures they're currently building in their yard.

[01:26:28] So I fully support the fact that two parking spaces is adequate, understanding that parking is not an insignificant issue for neighborhoods, but we've already got a problem with vehicles for rental properties anyway, and the fact that it should be by right, because at $300,000, we are not going to have a lot of people who invest in that. Think to yourself, if you build something for $300,000, how many renters you'd have to have over what period of time to make your investment back? My feeling is probably that people are going to choose this because they have

[01:27:02] significantly greater reasons having to do with their family to invest $300,000, and that it is not a money-making enterprise because that kind of money-making enterprise makes no sense financially so just putting that out there and with that i will ask if there is a motion oh sorry public hearing skipped a step sorry okay i will open the public hearing miss shinneberry has this public hearing been properly advertised yes it has someone has signed up prior to the meeting to speak and then after that person speaks we'll open the floor if there's anybody else in the room

[01:27:41] so the one person that spoke is katie johnson or we'll be speaking with katie johnson katie johnson and the clerk has my address i came tonight to ask that adus be approved by special use permit i i'm happy to hear um council member hall's concern i share those concerns i generally support adus but only with very strong guardrails i ask the city to retain the ability to ensure

[01:28:15] appropriateness and ensure no negative impacts on neighbors or neighborhoods parking is absolutely a concern and should have a plan for enforcement city should also have in place a process much like the city retains the right to inspect chickens coops the city must have the ability to enforce the ordinances the shed on my at my house i there are places that i cannot put my shed i cannot put my shed in the rpa i cannot put my shed i had to get special exception to put my shed where it is. So there are rules about where sheds belong. But my concern also is we have the ability

[01:28:52] to inspect chicken coops to ensure that the chickens are safe. Why do we not have the same ability? Why can't the city retain the same ability to make sure and ensure that the people living in these small places are safe as well? Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak on this agenda item? Good evening, Mayor Reed, members of council. I'm Jim

[01:29:27] Gillespie. I live at 3604 Colony Road. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the ADU ordinance amendment. As we all know, there's a regional shortage of housing, housing at all price points. There's a shortage of housing for young adults. There's a shortage of housing for seniors. There's a shortage of housing for everybody in between. And the ADU ordinance would be a modest but meaningful step in the direction of providing housing for some people

[01:30:03] who need it. Now, you may think 50 housing units over a decade or so, well, does that really do anything? Well, it does a lot for those 50 people. They are getting a home when they did not have it before. And I think a little bit about a situation in my own extended family. I have a close relative who is roughly my age, who is disabled, and at this point is living in a senior living residence and barely affording it. And I think about what it would be like to have that person come and live

[01:30:41] in my home. And we could make it work, but it would be difficult. It would be a sacrifice for us. It would be a real sacrifice to the dignity of this person to be a boarder in my home.

[01:30:58] And an ADU kind of arrangement would provide that person with more autonomy, the feeling of living independently, of having more responsibility for their own life. So I thank you for all of the work that staff has done, for all the many efforts that you have done to study this issue, to assess it, and I hope you will vote yes.

[01:31:19] Thank you. there anybody else in the room that would like to speak is there a motion I move to approve an ordinance amending chapter 110 zoning to amend portions of the art of articles and sections contained therein including introductory provisions zoning districts and regulations and definition is there a second second motion has been made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Peterson a roll call vote hang on are we going to

[01:31:54] have discussion is there a discussion on the motion councilmember Peterson yes is this something that we need to do tonight or is it possible that this could be allowed some further public review of what we just saw tonight before we make a decision here council always has the discretion to defer action on an item with an appropriate motion and I would be interested in the sense of the body here whether that's something that would be acceptable it does seem that we're voting on something we just saw I know it's been around for a while on the other hand we've seen some new information do you want to make a

[01:32:31] substitute motion is that how we would proceed mr. Lubkerman that would be the mechanism the do you want to make a substitute motion yes and I will need help from mr. Lubkerman to get the exact word and correct so if I may I assume you'll just be asking to defer action on this item to a date certain of Blank it the next time we get together next earliest time we get together September I believe that'd be September the eighth that would be fine from my standpoint, but I need to make a motion

[01:33:06] Let's defer consideration until September 8th. Is there a second second? A motion has been made by councilmember Peterson and seconded by councilmember Hall a roll call vote Is there comment available at this time? Do you want to yes discussion on the motion?

[01:33:25] Yeah, I just, I really, I think that we gave a lot of time for the noise ordinance and then the city of Fairfax government put out a post and people are all up in arms about it. And I just think that something of this magnitude, while it very well may pass and people might be very, very supportive of it, I think that the timing of the more finalized versions of this came out in June.

[01:33:47] Now we're doing this in July. These are historically vacation months. People are not here. So I just think that we need a little bit more time to be able to give people to understand this. I'd love to see the city put out something about this so that we can, you know, share it all around and really garner some additional support, whether in favor or against, just so we know that we're making a decision with more information.

[01:34:09] Thank you. Councilmember Amos? Just two quick comments. The first being, you know, part of it is we're not going to know what needs to be fixed until it's implemented, unfortunately, especially when it comes to parking, to the actual number of ADUs, and we gauge interest on where this is popping up.

[01:34:28] And if we're going to hit that 50 target in the next 10 years or maybe lower, if it's higher, that's something we'll need to track. The other, I'm very hesitant on the special use permit particularly because I just feel like that people have a right to their property.

[01:34:45] And they should be allowed to develop it within reason. I do feel like the Board of Zoning Appeals is capable of assessing that. The point about deferral and the discussion on the motion, I guess my question would be, why wouldn't we defer more actions that happen over summer in general when people are traveling?

[01:35:04] Unfortunately, you know, business has to get done. It's my personal feeling on that. Council Member McCoolin. I would like a defer because I would like to ask a little bit more information, get gather more information regarding the special use permit process my understanding that is that it can take quite a long time for some people so i want to better understand that process more this is something that just came up this evening this isn't something that we really discussed in detail prior so deferring this to the next meeting would allow me that ability thank you council

[01:35:40] member bates um so first off uh this is something that as i recall has been in the works since at least last year's is that right if not earlier and so it's not something that was introduced you know just a month or two ago you know it's been on public agendas we've received feedback about it with regard to the special use permit first off a is a resident required to pay that fee regardless of whether or

[01:36:13] not the city council ultimately votes it up or down yes that's correct um so again you know we don't know what the financial means of the applicant you know every single applicant is going to be um they may have an agreement with someone who may be the the very first occupant of that unit where you know they pay to build it what have you um and then they're in a situation where they're out almost a thousand dollars um and plus the you know whatever additional costs they may have incurred through having somebody help prepare whatever documentation they might

[01:36:49] need or what have you don't know what goes into that and you know without anything to really show for it and additionally the you know the I recall from reviewing the language of the ordinance that and I believe was also actually mentioned here tonight if the the property is you know due to whatever circumstances, it gets to a point where it's no longer in conformance with the requirements

[01:37:23] set forth there. They're no longer allowed to use that ADU. Is that right? Yes, that's right. And that exists regardless of whether or not there's a special use permit process. And would there be any difference in enforcement of that if there is a special use permit process or not? Well, that's up to council. The bare minimum for a special use permit, what the changes would be in the zoning ordinance, there's a table in the zoning ordinance called the accessory use table.

[01:37:59] Accessory dwelling units are listed in there. Accessory dwelling units are listed as permitted uses in the RH, RL, and RM zones. That could be changed to a special use permit to cover all ADUs or it could be split into accessory dwelling units attached and accessory dwelling units detached.

[01:38:23] One would be special, one would be permitted. In that case, we would need a definition of each in the definition section. But that's the bare minimum, and the standards that we reviewed today could stay the same if that's council's wishes.

[01:38:41] If council wishes to add other standards, you all could do that as well. Yeah. Yeah. But so with regard to the enforcement mechanism, would that be any different in terms of, you know, there's there's similar enforcement mechanisms to SUPs that the SUP is permitted, you know, for whatever is applied for.

[01:39:02] And if that changes, then that would be out of conformity and the property owner would have to come back for a new SUP if that changes. but um in terms of how that's enforced with regard to you know what's proposed um it's would you say that it's similar to um you know that provision that's currently in there you know and it's not in conformance and in the longer functions correct that that would be similar the difference would be if council imposes additional requirements as part of the sup process that that that would be something that's above and beyond what's in the zoning ordinance right right but we

[01:39:39] could also if we wanted to amend or you know set the requirements as is you know regardless of whether there's an sup or not correct yeah yeah and so we've already discussed those requirements previously anyways just you know some clarification that's very helpful thank you council member hardy chandler i think put simply what concerns me is adding a burden to people who may want to pursue this option and a burden that would not be in place if they were doing something else like

[01:40:13] simply improving their property in a different way. So the added burden that does not feel fair to me is not something that I'm wanting to consider. I want it to be an encouragement for people to consider this when it's right for their family and right for their financial circumstances rather than sort of punishing them and adding extra hoops for them to jump through in order to have this happen.

[01:40:38] So I'm in support of continuing with the vote today. Council Member Peterson. Just to clarify, my interest here was actually not to address the special use permit issue, which sounds like there's still some conversation around, but really to give residents a chance to digest this a little bit, Sometimes it seems like it's a little bit much for us to receive new information.

[01:41:05] People are giving, we invite people to do a public hearing the same night and they've just seen it and in some cases have not even yet seen it. It's difficult for people to be able to access some of this information ahead of time and digest it. We're actually getting explanations here that help them do that.

[01:41:21] Then we turn right around and we vote. If there's no harm in giving a little bit more time for people to digest this in case there is something out of that that's meaningful I I don't see why we wouldn't delay and I in terms of the July time frame I mean people are busy all the time I will say however I have received some comments from residents who have expressed the concern that they've been out of pocket pretty badly in July and are having a hard time keeping up with what's going on in terms of city business so this is a time when it's been a little bit tougher probably than normal to do that and I

[01:41:57] would think because of significant new information that we're having in front of us tonight and the lack of the opportunity for people to really have time to digest it and for us to be able to hear from them. And again, there may be no feedback whatsoever, but as in the case of the noise ordinance, there may be quite a bit of feedback. In any case, it would be great to give us that opportunity if possible. And I don't think it's a major burden in terms of a postponement here for another decision I also don't think it would require a particularly large amount of time to act on this when it does come back so that was really the

[01:42:35] intention that I had here thank you councilmember Hall thank you I do also want to remind everyone that this was the body earlier this month who delayed the implementation of an otherwise agreed upon council code of ethics to allows our boards and Commission's time to review it when it wasn't even decided that they were going to be subject to it so I just have a hard time not allowing additional time for our 24,000 residents to make sure that they've wrapped their heads around this potential change to their neighborhoods

[01:43:15] and just for clarification on that in that meeting I asked mr. Lubcom in if the timeline was affected if we did that action and he said no so the timeline was not changed because of that so if there's no further discussion on this motion to defer can we take a roll call vote miss Shinaberry councilmember Amos nay councilmember Hall yes councilmember Hardy Chandler nay councilmember Peterson all right councilmember Bates councilmember McClellan yes motion failed

[01:43:51] three to three so the original motion which was made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Peterson is their discussion on the original motion before we take a roll call vote council member hall i'd like to make it very clear that i think that this could be an excellent opportunity for our community for our residents i simply do not feel that those that are away and that have spent the summer since their kids have been out of school have sufficient time to truly understand and digest what is included here which

[01:44:27] is why i strongly supported and was going to ask for a delay myself so my vote tonight is not a no against adus it's a no against the process that is not allowing our residents sufficient time to absorb this information thank you any other discussion on the motion and i will simply say we've been working on this adu amendment i believe since i was elected mayor so it is not something new we have had work sessions on it there may not have been work sessions you saw previous to being on this council but we have been talking about this adu ordinance since at least 2024 if not

[01:45:06] not 2023. So with that, a roll call vote. Okay. Council Member McQuillan. I too wanted to state on the record that I will be voting no on this because I too, in our last meeting, was convinced and in being collaborative and trying to ensure that everyone and my colleagues had enough time to speak with their constituents and do their due diligence, I decided to go ahead and agree with the rest of council that we would delay adopting our code of ethics and this evening

[01:45:43] I was also kind of in the same boat here where I was going okay a special use permit for $600 that's a lot of money I know some of the timing the process can take a long time however I'm not even given enough time to speak with constituents and talk to them about this to ensure that they understand that this is what's going to happen when this is approved this evening. So I just want to let everyone know that I'm not saying no to ADUs because I actually support them fully. I'm very frustrated that the process tonight that we're saying that we don't care about what our constituents think about this. We have all of this set out really nicely now.

[01:46:23] We know exactly what it entails and our constituents can look it over and give us really good accurate feedback. They're all on vacation. Everybody is gone this summer. We know this they're going to return next month because school starts in August can we really wait for one month yes we could but we're not going to tonight so my vote will be a no but it's not against ADUs because I do want affordability and I want housing here however I'm very frustrated that we feel like it's okay to just push things along and not give a deferment thank you councilmember

[01:46:58] Peterson yeah it is I think a little bit frustrating for everybody to be in this position i um i support the detached adu approach i do think there's a little bit of unfinished business here and if we're not going to be able to give ourselves some breathing room to let people give us feedback and tie this up with a nice bow when we get back the way we really ought to i would just say that i would hope that our city manager and city staff would move forward

[01:47:29] in a manner that would retain flexibility as needed to address needs that may come up as a consequence of public feedback that we receive after this evening's vote and that we stay flexible and responsive every step of the way.

[01:47:50] And that could be special use permit, but it could be any number of other things. As I mentioned earlier, this is going to go into an early implementation phase. It will be an early period of discovery. It will be much like a pilot. And I will support this, but it will be based on the assumption that we will take seriously feedback that we receive and that we will act on that feedback without hesitation as necessary and retain the flexibility we need to do that.

[01:48:20] And so I will be supporting this, but I must say I have real reservations about the way in which we're doing this and we're not giving people a chance to kind of have a last look at something that has some new elements to it. Thank you. Any other comments? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Council Member Amos?

[01:48:40] Aye. Council Member Hall? No. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? No. Okay, motion passed four to two. Okay, we will go on to second general public comment. Is there anybody in the room that would like to make a general public comment tonight. All right. Seeing none, we will now recess the regular meeting to go into a work session. We'll take a five-minute recess to move into the work

[01:49:12] session room. Welcome to our work session. Before we begin the work session, I want to give a

[01:57:03] background on the development review process for applications. The development review process was established through a series of mayor and city council retreats to ensure development concepts or presented to the Mayor and City Council as a whole rather than through individual meetings.

[01:57:20] This approach promotes transparency by ensuring all elected officials receive the same information at the same time. Pre-application briefings occur before a formal application is submitted. At this stage, City staff provides a high-level overview of a proposed concept and the potential applicant is available to answer questions.

[01:57:41] The plans are conceptual, and the Mayor and City Council may offer general observations as guidance. Once a formal application is submitted and accepted, City staff conducts a detailed review for compliance with applicable codes and policies.

[01:57:58] Post-submission work sessions include an in-depth staff analysis and typically occur after the applicant has addressed initial staff comments and before the application proceeds to public hearings. The process has been reviewed and refined over time by successive mayor and city councils.

[01:58:18] Changes have included clarifying materials to distinguish pre-application briefings from post-submission work sessions and allowing potential applicants to answer questions during pre-application briefings to provide additional context for conceptual proposals.

[01:58:34] So we are just setting the stage for where we are with this work session. Ms. Shinneberry, what is our first work session here? our first item is a pre-application briefing on a request by network realty partners for the redevelopment of 3541 chain bridge road i'm going to recognize clara schweiger our city planner for the staff presentation good evening mayor and council first up tonight for work sessions is a discussion on a potential redevelopment at 3541 chain bridge road we are currently in the pre-application stage of the development review process so a formal land use application has not

[01:59:12] yet been submitted city staff have met with the potential applicant and provided initial feedback on the potential proposal so the top left image here is an aerial of the site the site is located at the southeast corner of chain bridge road and eaton place west of university drive and north of fairfax boulevard the future land use designation for this site is the activity center place type and the site is located in the Northfax Activity Center and is subject to the Northfax Small Area

[01:59:47] Plan. The site is currently zoned CR Commercial Retail, and the potential applicant proposes to rezone to CU Commercial Urban. This slide shows proposed residential development in the Northfax Activity Center. This table is also provided in your briefing packet, but just to give a quick summary. In Northfax, the small area plan estimates 1,400 new residential units in the near term. To date, there are 1,088 units currently in some phase of the land use process

[02:00:22] in the Northfax Activity Center. In all activity centers, the small area plans estimate 4,700 new units in the near term. To date, 2,753 units are in some phase of the land use process in all activity centers. Outside of the activity centers, 3,022 units are in the land use pipeline. And then the table on the bottom here shows each project in North Facts with the status and the number of units proposed. Now, going back to the potential project for tonight's discussion, existing on the

[02:01:00] development site are two two-story office buildings and 124 parking spaces on approximately 2.09 acres. This is the concept plan. The potential applicant proposes 29 townhouses and eight two over two units with a proposed height maximum of four stories. They propose 2,750 square feet of retail on University Drive, a new private street, a widened 10-foot sidewalk on Eaton Place, and an eight-foot sidewalk on University Drive, and an internal six-foot sidewalk leading to units.

[02:01:38] The potential applicant proposes a 4,200-square-foot linear park, 8,300-square-feet of open space, and an inter-parcelal connection to the south. Here are renderings of the potential proposal.

[02:01:55] So these are looking at the stacked townhouses, so the two-over-twos. And here are more renderings. On the left is a retail building, and then on the right, you're seeing the townhouses.

[02:02:11] So city staff met with the applicant, the potential applicant, and has provided preliminary feedback on the potential proposal. This list was included in your briefing packet.

[02:02:31] And on June 22nd, the Planning Commission held a pre-application briefing with the applicant and gave the applicant feedback. A summary of this feedback has also been included in your briefing packet. Potential land use requests for the proposal would be a rezoning from CR Commercial Retail to CU Commercial Urban and the Architectural Control Overlay District, a special use permit for townhouses and multifamily, a general development plan, and a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping.

[02:03:06] So the next steps are a land use application submission, staff review, work sessions with the Planning Commission, the BAR, and City Council, and then public hearings. And that concludes my presentation.

[02:03:23] I'm here to answer any questions that you have. The potential applicant is also standing by for questions. Thank you for the presentation. Councilmember Amos? Thank you very much for the very brief presentation. Just to quickly go over what I liked that I saw, the sidewalk widths I think are appropriate.

[02:03:43] I think 10 feet on Eaton, 8 feet on University, I think that makes a lot of sense. I do like the university connection and access from Chambridge. I actually, my understanding based off of what I saw on the plan, the access point to the property from Eaton is removed, correct?

[02:03:58] I do like that element of it as well, taking that off. I also really, yes, right there, thank you. also like the linear park and green space concept so I do like to see that you have a good amount of green space proposed from this initial application just a few questions it might be a little too early but I imagine in terms of stormwater if I recall correctly this is kind of on a slope in terms of stormwater are we looking at an underground tank is what's there sufficient or what would be implemented for that I guess I would be to the

[02:04:30] applicant just early thoughts thank you madam mayor members of City Council Bob rant with the law firm of walsh collucci on behalf of the applicant this evening i'm joined by greg tremor from network realty partners and appreciate the opportunity to come before council and get feedback answer questions and hopefully begin this process council member amos you asked about storm water management we have not yet fully designed it we're still very early this is the concept plan this is really the extent of what we designed so far but make no mistake about

[02:05:06] it there will be storm water management facilities provided on site what we're anticipating is Exactly what you what you described underground facilities detention stormwater quantity quality controls things like that It will be a significant benefit over what's there today. This property was developed in the early 1970s And I think it's safe to say is probably entirely lacking in terms of stormwater controls So that's one of the several benefits that the redevelopment of this property will just inherently bring forward Thank you. My next question in terms of height. So the what's currently there?

[02:05:41] I think I saw on the plane it was 28 feet, if I'm correct, and then you have proposed four stories. What's the gap there? What's the difference? That's correct. The two-story buildings, I think you're correct, are around 28, 30 feet high.

[02:05:57] What we are proposing at this point is a maximum height of four stories, or 60 feet. The 60 feet would be the two-over-two units, the stacked townhouse units on the left side of your screen, the west side of the site, fronting on Chambridge Road, those will be a little bit taller than the single-family attached, the townhouse units. One of the reasons we did that was to kind of establish that frontage, establish that bookend of the site, create kind of a gateway as you're coming into the city by concentrating that mass there. But that four-story, 60-foot height would be the maximum. The townhouses would likely be a bit shorter than that, but again, we're early in the process, and so all of that information will be provided if and when it moves forward.

[02:06:37] absolutely and i know it's early in the process so for example you know i'd be curious our economic development director's thoughts what exactly is driving this is it vacancy rates is it i mean what are we what are we looking at for this yeah and i'll ask greg to chime in with a little bit more detail but um the reality is these these buildings are really approaching or at the end of their useful life um they're about 50 years old at this point and um they're deteriorating and frankly the costs of um getting them back to where they need to be to release these these spaces are it's it's it's approaching to the point where it's cost prohibitive and so that's why the property owners in the position now where they're looking to the next phase the next step for this property and so

[02:07:17] what we've come forward with is what we think and what we hope council agrees is a step in the right direction something that's consistent with the small area plan and continuing the the progress of development here in norfax greg do you want to add to that that's exactly right in terms of the condition of the buildings. In terms of the product mix and the direction of the plan, we looked kind of holistically in this broader market, and we're really excited about kind of the canvas that's been painted already. We have a senior housing building. We have a rental apartment building coming out of the ground. What we don't have is home ownership opportunities. And in this small little plan, we fit a lot of, we think, great things. There's the two over two units,

[02:07:55] which will be the smallest of the units, and then a mixture of 16-foot wide and 20-foot-wide towns. So in this plan, you have three different types of home ownership opportunities. That will be the first kind of in this broader area. And we think that all of that residential activity, in addition to the two hotels that already exist, brings a kind of a nice diversity of pedestrian activity, and we'll kind of start to activate it as a whole.

[02:08:17] So we're really excited about that. Thank you. My last question is related to the retail portion, and there's kind of two things built into that. One, for the retail, I mean, when you say retail, do you mean more commercial office space or do you more so mean, for example, restaurant usage or something like that, just for clarification?

[02:08:35] Yeah, so our hope is that it's neighborhood-serving retail. We intentionally had it front on the linear park because we like that interface between that activity in the park interacting with the retail. It's very, very early to try and determine what we'll lease in that space.

[02:08:53] Our hope would be, though, it would be neighborhood-serving retail rather than commercial uses. Understood. And part of the reason I ask that is because it just felt a little odd to have that retail space fronting, well, not fronting technically, but closer to the Cambridge Road side. I would think, considering you have an adjacent shopping center on the University Drive portion, you might get more consistency putting that on the University Drive side.

[02:09:15] I wasn't sure what went to your thought process on that. Yeah, so the retail actually is on the right side, east side of the site on the University Drive. correct and and the reason for that just just so you're aware and you know when we first met with with staff about this they they emphasize the importance of having that retail frontage there because that's what the small area plan recommends if you look at this site this site the hotel site to the south and even points to the north across eaton place it's envisioned in the small area plan that that linear park has a retail frontage and so what you see here is the product of several conversations we had with staff early on to advance that design i am very happy to hear i

[02:09:52] I was wrong about that so thank you so I didn't say you were wrong per se I'll say it to myself no that's good to know and that was it for my questions thank you thank you councilmember Quillen thank you um how much commercial will be preserved so the the existing office buildings are about 16,000 square feet little over that councilmember McQuillen those will be those will be removed and replaced with the proposed retail that we have here which is just

[02:10:22] over 2,700 square feet. Okay. And then how much, how, how much room is there for, I'm looking at the renderings and they, I like, I actually really like this plan a lot. I'll be honest with you. I really like this plan a lot. I like the retail on the side. But the renderings, is there a lot of room for changing the look to look less square and modern and like everything else I see in everybody else's city that's being built absolutely um when and this is bob and my first

[02:10:59] opportunity to work together and and he said you know you don't really need uh renderings at this point it's just conceptual and i said let's put something in there and facilitate a conversation so the answer is absolutely and we want that feedback and we we want this whole project to feel like it's part of the fabric of the city fairfax great i really i do like the setup i like the green space i like where you have the retail i'd like to see a little or the commercial i'd like to see a little bit more preservation for commercial, but the renderings and the look of the appearance, I think you could go a long way if it really matches our community well and keeps to the character.

[02:11:33] So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Peterson. Yeah, I've got for staff a couple of questions here just on page one and just a couple quick math questions for you. on the far right bottom activity centers plus outside of number of units and there's you drop down you go to a total of 3022 what is that number okay sorry can you repeat your question i was looking at my presentation on the staff report that's okay so i'm going to the staff

[02:12:08] report yes and i'm going down to uh bottom right corner of page one okay so you've got a couple tables here uh that give you the tally of what are known what your benchmark estimates but i'll circle back to and then the very far right and they have numbers for the first two for north facts then activity centers plus combined the last one is activity centers plus outside of and it's blank but if you drop down to the very bottom it's 3022 what does that mean yeah that's

[02:12:43] all like one table so that means the projects that are in a land use process right now including activity centers and those outside of activity centers those are in a land use process how do you reconcile that with the first two boxes one for north facts and one for activity centers combined the north facts one has 1400 and the small area plan benchmark estimate for activity Center says 4,700. And Ms. Schweiger, if you could pull up that slide as well. I think that might be

[02:13:21] helpful. So the 1,400 units, Council Member Peterson, is the benchmark estimate for the Northfax small area plan. And so that's what's identified in the plan in terms of a benchmark estimate over the near-term development in North Facts. So there is not a benchmark estimate for areas outside of activity centers. So in that final table on the far right of this slide,

[02:13:54] you don't see a benchmark estimate. So what's included there is in total number of residential units at some place within the development review process that could be considered by city council at some point in time if those proposals or projects proceed those are the figures associated with that so under construction approved under review and in a pre-application phase and so those are the units that are somewhere in the development review process with the city that's

[02:14:33] the 3,022 yes sir all right so just to check my math so if you look at current population in city of fairfax which is 26,340 or something like that and you add 47 to it that's 4,700 that's knocking the door at an 18 percent increase if you add another 3,000 to it it's like a 29 percent increase over base so just adding the numbers up again just a math thing trying where you have a current population i'm trying to get a sense of how much that current population expands i'll take

[02:15:12] your word for it councilmember peterson blame it on the iphone if it's wrong okay and my thumbs which i have too many of right now all right so so so there's that just uh then i you said near term what does that mean so the small area plans identify a 10 to 15 year near term development window and so as as shown in those plans there's a full illustrative build-out of what redevelopment in those areas which are designated redevelopment areas

[02:15:47] in the city might look like as those plans were being developed based upon market conditions what is included is what is estimated redevelopment activity could um result in over that 10 to 15 year period so for north facts uh it was 1400 units great but so and we've talked about this so you'll correct me if i don't exactly get it right but those benchmark estimates are uh what market conditions could result in that is not however

[02:16:24] a public policy goal that's been adopted by the city that is correct and that's a very critical point for everybody to recognize so I think we need to be cautious about any presentation and I'm not pointing fingers at this one that might suggest that we are trying to attain these particular goals that is not the case we're simply tracking metrics but I'm curious also I don't see our economic development director here although maybe she's hiding somewhere but we have a metric

[02:16:55] here which is housing units are we also estimating commercial expansion market potential and for that matter retail and I don't even talk about industrial but let's just talk about commercial and retail over the same period I don't see those benchmarks here we are and and that's information that we can provide to City Council moving forward I think this table is put together in response to a previous request so we included it in this presentation but we can add additional information

[02:17:29] regarding commercial square footages as well well i mean it gets to a strategic question i think for the council in the city as it is trying to address public interest and that is the goal that either we have or we've certainly discussed of expanding the presence of commercial redevelopment and or development in the city and we don't have parallel numbers here to tell us what those numbers look like next to residential numbers so the conversation is a little bit one-sided we're just talking residential we're not talking

[02:18:08] commercial here this is a case where we're reducing the and so there is certainly an interest in expanding commercial and and in this case we're actually reducing it from 16,000 to 2,700 square feet. I think that's a really big hit on a commercial square footage. And again, our economic development director is not here, but she will, I'm sure, be listening in on this.

[02:18:32] It's my understanding that just across the street at Brightview, one of the objectives there to address this very problem is to add 7,000 square feet, at least, of commercial there. So i guess my question is if if we are trying to expand commercial in this area why aren't we focusing the approach on this particular site in a manner that's consistent with that because that would seem to be consistent with the city's goals i'll i'll defer to the applicant or the potential

[02:19:10] applicant regarding this potential site sure thanks thanks mr hart and thanks councilmember peterson for the question i think it's a good one right um you know this site has been a commercial use for the last 50 or so years for the reasons I described, the existing facilities on the site, the buildings themselves are just, they're at the end of their lifespan.

[02:19:31] And so the question then becomes, what's next? And so when we looked at this property and working with the owner, trying to figure out what made the best sense for North Fast, what made the best sense for the city, as Greg was mentioning earlier, we thought that introducing opportunities for homeownership here were appropriate.

[02:19:47] Now, I acknowledge that there will be a reduction in the amount of commercial space, certainly compared to what's there today. We are bringing forward what I do believe is a meaningful number, 2,700 square feet. But I think looking at the bigger picture here, what these future residents will do is support the existing commercial uses that are already in the area.

[02:20:07] The shopping centers down the street, the future growth yet to come in Norfolk's. And so I do think that this application, this proposal, which is a relatively small piece of North Facts and the bigger picture, does have a role to play. You've got the botanist coming online right now.

[02:20:23] It's under construction. I think that's bringing about 5,000 square feet. I forget if you mentioned that or not, Council Member Peterson. But looking at this site and working through this development program, we felt that this was the highest and the best use for it. and certainly something that can be a valuable part of the overall North Facts community.

[02:20:41] So I think it would be great to maybe have an expanded conversation that I would like, if possible, to have the benefit of our economic development director to be a part of to understand the commercial status mix and potential goals in that area because right across the street there is, of course, quite substantial commercial redevelopment going on, And I don't think the issue here is trying to make use of the 50-year-old buildings.

[02:21:10] I think it's pretty clear that this is a redevelopment scenario under any scenario here that's taking place. But I think the question is whether it's really the right time and place to be knocking out so much commercial given these circumstances. And I'd certainly like to understand that more clearly.

[02:21:27] The other thing that factors into that is in terms of the type of commercial development that is consistent with future market conditions and could actually, those conditions could be shaped a bit by proactive things that we might do here.

[02:21:49] My understanding from our economic development director is that where the city shines and could shine is smaller scale commercial sites that would be of interest to firms that don't want to go into the really big office building developments that are outside of the city, but are looking for smaller scale and by definition more affordable, also that are amenitized.

[02:22:20] and it creates a set of conditions that those firms are looking for. And we have some competitive advantages there, and this would be a case where this is a site that could potentially be acting on them. I'm not sure how much of the formulation of this proposal has involved conversations around economic development and commercial development in the city, but to me that's kind of the white elephant here.

[02:22:44] I appreciate what you've brought forward, But I do want to acknowledge that we have kind of a big-picture issue here for the city in this particular location. I would feel more comfortable if we had a chance to unpack that a little bit here as we decide what works best here.

[02:23:03] Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Hardy-Chandler. Thank you. I really appreciate slide four because I think, as I mentioned in a previous meeting, Sometimes we look at projects individually and we don't consider what else is going on in the area.

[02:23:26] So I think that we did ask for, particularly on the residential side, what else is going on and where this falls. So in North Facts, is this proposal included in the pre-application number that's in the upper left side? Okay. Thank you.

[02:23:43] The other question that I had was for retail, you mentioned neighborhood serving. What does that mean specifically? Can you break down what that means for me? Sure, sure. And I think it's things like small boutiques, perhaps a coffee shop, a cafe, a small restaurant, things that could, as I was mentioning before, you know, be used by the future residents here.

[02:24:07] And so I'm sure Greg would agree with me. It's still, again, we're on step one of 100 of this process. It's still relatively early. I think as we move forward, hopefully that vision gets fleshed out a little bit more. At this point, anyway, we're hoping to maintain as much flexibility as we can to expand the universe of potential uses.

[02:24:25] But what we're thinking is most likely is something like I described, a small restaurant, cafe, store, something like that. Thank you. I just wanted to understand the category. Sure. I did read in the report where you were talking about the buildings being at the end of their life. So can you talk a little bit about the current tenants? And so it's at the end of its life.

[02:24:42] Something is going to have to happen, right? These buildings are not sustainable at all. Some choice is going to have to be made. So for the current tenants, I guess a couple of questions there. Any very early thoughts about what might happen with them in terms of a plan?

[02:25:02] And also what is the current vacancy of those buildings? Yeah, the current vacancy is about 40%, and that's going to grow to the buildings are set to go entirely vacant over the next 18 months. The buildings are structurally, you know, I don't want to say unsound, but in poor condition, and it no longer makes sense to continue to reinvest them.

[02:25:23] So in any scenario, those buildings will be closed here in the next 18 to 24 months. Okay. And you mentioned, if I heard you correctly, in another response, you mentioned this as being different from some of the other projects that you're involved in.

[02:25:39] Is that what went into the decision for this particular kind of proposal? because i think there was a mention of rental properties and other properties so was this to diversify well in terms of this particular plan it was diversifying the housing opportunities in this sub market right now right now there's a rental product coming up and there's the senior housing and so forth and so we saw a distinct opportunity um specifically in townhouses that are smaller more attainable uh the two over twos will be even a lower price point so we felt like hit a real sweet spot that wasn't an opportunity there so having differentiated product was was

[02:26:18] very interesting the other thing that's about the site that uh is important to note is it's a small site um it's just over two acres um with the hotel to the south there's no real opportunity to grow that to do a more substantial project um and so this was an opportunity to kind of pack a lot into a small bag so um i've checked a lot of boxes thank you appreciate it that's my questions for now thank you councilmember Hall sorry can you give me another minute please thanks councilmember Bates I certainly do overall

[02:26:55] like some aspects of this project the the layout of overall the sidewalks and site access I will say that the smaller area plan envisions this site being all commercial understanding that you know there might be room for compromise here but I would like to see ideally at least half the commercial space that's there replaced and you know there are things that could be done in terms of perhaps structured parking you know we've seen other sites in the city where there's you know a small office filling with a small parking garage

[02:27:33] or something like that and in addition to you know the retail frontage is certainly needed there you know at an absolute minimum but the small area plan envisions that fronting onto the linear park which i think is perhaps maybe just a matter of moving that sidewalk around to the other side and you know having it front onto that sidewalk on that side but yeah again more commercial space office and or retail but still certainly you know i think that having some for sale units here add

[02:28:11] some diversity to the housing stock in this part of North Vax. Councilmember Hull? Thank you. Sorry, I forgot my reading glasses. I'm having to, like, zoom in or go over to the screen. Sucks getting old. I have a couple, I don't know if they're Clara questions or not, but back to slide four.

[02:28:32] I know we're spending a lot of time on that. The benchmark estimates of 1,400 for North Vax and 4,700 for the activity centers combined, that equates to 6,100 units, correct? If you're adding those two together, or is the 4,700 inclusive of the four?

[02:28:52] Inclusive. Okay. 4,700 total among all of the activity centers. Okay. So, sorry, we're going to have to do math real quick because I did it the other way. So, what I found, sorry, wrong buttons. 41.

[02:29:10] Okay. So, 4,700. Okay. So what I found with a quick search was that in 2024, the total dwelling units in the city was 10,467. So these proposed residential development plans to add 4,700 units, which is 45% of what we currently have available for dwelling units.

[02:29:49] So we are adding an extraordinary amount in this overall proposal, not your specific proposal. Let me be clear on that. And then of the 914 units that are currently under construction, or am I doing that wrong?

[02:30:10] It should be 430 under construction, or is it 484 total under construction? 484 total under construction among all four of the activity centers. So then 484 divided by 467 gets me to, let's call it about 5%.

[02:30:30] So there is 5% of the total dwelling units in 2024 that is currently under construction in the city. I trust your math. I didn't at first, but then I went back and did it the right way.

[02:30:46] Okay, so what I'm hearing is that we're going to be adding, based upon this slide, 45% of our existing housing stock. we're going to be adding an additional 45% of that total based on what we have on this slide. I think those are really important numbers.

[02:31:04] Now, to your specific proposal, and this might be, again, a clear question first, but on page 6, the residence inn that is right near this, I believe that is a four-story building, which is roughly 48 feet tall.

[02:31:21] I believe it's five. I'm going by memory. I Googled it, but it said four, but is it five? I think so. I believe so. Okay, so five feet would be roughly 60 feet tall? 60 feet. Okay, so your building then for that frontage there is going to be similar to the residence in?

[02:31:40] Correct. Okay. I will say that makes me feel a little better, but still not great. So I actually live across the street on Eaton Place. If you go across and down, I'm in that neighborhood there. So this is very, very close to home for me. You might be surprised, based upon my other comments along the way, that I actually do like this.

[02:32:00] I do have some suggestions, though. I do feel, even though the residence inn apparently is taller than I thought, I do feel personally that townhouses where the stackable units are would make more sense. I think it would keep the height a little bit lower there as you're driving along Chainbridge Road.

[02:32:17] And then maybe you could potentially repurpose some of the interior townhomes to be the stackable units. That way you have that extra height, but it's not looming over the street there. I know across the street from there is the assembly townhomes. I believe, again, someone can correct me, I think they are three stories tall.

[02:32:35] So it might give a little bit more balance to what's there. I like the green space. I cannot wait until those connections on that service road are closed off. So this gets us there a little bit faster. Very happy to see the 10-foot sidewalk on Eaton, the 8-foot sidewalk on University.

[02:32:54] the parking that is available, the 88 parking spaces, again, my old eyes are failing me today, but it looks like there are some guest parking spots, Amazon drop-off deliveries, those kind of spots available in addition to what's at the residences themselves.

[02:33:13] Correct. So the surface parking spaces are really, they could be used for both. So the ones on the left side, so the west side of the site adjacent to the stacked townhouses, I think there's eight or nine spaces there, but some of those would be kind of dedicated to the stacked townhouses.

[02:33:29] The stacked townhouses will have one-car garages, and so the rest of the parking would be provided in that surface parking area on the left. The surface parking area on the right primarily would be devoted to the retail, the commercial uses, but after hours in the evenings and weekends when that space is maybe not functioning, those would be theoretically available for guests, visitors, things like that.

[02:33:51] Okay. While I have the opportunity to speak with you, Council Member Hall, just real briefly, one of the reasons we provided that open space area on the south part of the screen here was to serve as a buffer between those units and the residents in. It's about 8,000 square feet, give or take, and we thought it was the right move to provide a little bit of a buffer there, but I appreciate your suggestions about potentially looking at shifting things around a little bit.

[02:34:14] We'll look at that. I just didn't want to miss that. Okay. No, I appreciate that. And I do also appreciate the buffer, and I'm sure people that live there will also appreciate it. um, the, these are all going to be for sale units, correct? Correct. Okay. And based upon the number that you're putting in, 6% of them will be affordable? Uh, I believe for the townhouses, it's 10%. Mr. Harden's nodding his head. 10%. 6% would apply to multifamily. Okay. I wasn't sure if the combination of the townhouses and the, and it would be split. So 10% on the townhouse and on the, the two over twos, the stack to those would be multifamily per zoning. And so that would

[02:34:53] be six percent okay so i think it's three or four three or four three or four i think okay uh and i don't mean to be naive about the two over two units but when it says eight two over two does that mean 16 units total or that means eight units like four eight total okay correct okay um i'm happy to see the dwelling units per acre at a reasonable 17.7 in my opinion um the private street you're referring to is this this the trash and all of those things would be handled entirely by the complex itself because they're townhouses right so they don't know so they do get city

[02:35:33] services correct the townhouses would get city services but the stacked units would not that's correct i don't know how that's going to work um similar situation in mount vineyard at the corner of Oak and Main Street has similar setup townhouses and two over twos and condominiums in that development so it is split okay different colored trash cans on different units I think is okay I was gonna say I was gonna imagine fighting over some dumpster space but maybe not um and again I

[02:36:07] know this is step one of a hundred um I do think again I live right near here what I think we are lacking is, like you said, a cafe-style place, a place that does sandwiches, a place that does a nice lunch. You can get some stuff for dinner takeout. I love coffee shops, but when they don't serve sufficient food, we have enough coffee shops right now. So again, I know that that's in the weeds, but I live here. I have a vested interest in seeing something like that succeed. But I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised, and I'm sure those that are watching at home are like, wow, she's actually supporting something, right?

[02:36:44] And I am. Again, I would like to see maybe the shift of the stackable over to the back, but I think there's a lot of really good things here. You did mention that the current tenants were 40% vacant right now and expected to transition out in the next 18 months.

[02:37:02] Is that simply because the owner of the building knows he or she wants to do something and is not renewing leases? The value of the leases are far below the cost to fix the building up to the state where we remain leasable.

[02:37:18] So it doesn't make any economic sense any longer. Okay. And what is currently in there? Like medical space? It's about a third medical and about two-thirds office. Okay. So the kind of local, small office kind of users. Okay. Do we know if we anticipate the people that are there currently wanting to remain in the city?

[02:37:38] Are there options for them? Or is that just they're likely gone? Yeah, I think, and, you know, the owner's not with us this evening, but, you know, we've had conversations with them. I think we would be absolutely very open to working with economic development and facilitating relocation in the city if that is a possibility.

[02:37:55] The ownership group that owns these buildings today have owned it for quite a long time, and so, you know, they very much want to do right by their tenants as they move on, as they move out. And so that's something they'll be working through throughout this process and beyond. One more thing while I have the microphone, and I'd be remit, at the risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory here.

[02:38:16] The green space you mentioned on Chambridge Road here, just to be very clear, what we did there is we took what's in the city's plans right now for the intersection improvements at Eaton Place and University, and we kind of overlaid what that's going to look like in the future, just to be very clear.

[02:38:33] Okay, so not a pocket park there. Correct. That's really for illustrative purposes. That's going to be done in the future when the intersection improvement project goes forward. And so what we did is we just simply overlaid the city's plans onto these drawings to show what it will look like in the future when it's all said and done.

[02:38:50] I appreciate your honesty and transparency on that one. The other spaces on the site, we'll take care of those. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Council Member Peterson. Yeah, I was wrong on my math. And Council Member Hall was kind enough to recut the numbers.

[02:39:07] And I just wanted to reinforce that the 45% growth in households over 10, 15 years, but let's call it 10 years, is more than four times, it's four and a half times the rate of household growth that occurred in the last, in the period of 2020 to 2025 in the city.

[02:39:28] So this just, again, this is not an issue with this particular proposal, but it is a general question and concern about the overall volume and rate of growth for residential units because it far surpasses both in rate and volume, what we've seen in the last five years.

[02:39:48] Of course, the backdrop is we're down economic and population growth, so it's even more reason to be wondering how best to approach these things. I think it underscores the need to have this conversation about the commercial strategy for this area and what that looks like and whether there are yet opportunities that you all haven't been able to capture yet that might tap into that.

[02:40:12] And I think it also makes us think a little bit twice about how we're approaching the residential unit additions across the board in small area plans. I appreciate what you all have done, and I appreciate your flexibility and openness here. And this is a first swing at what you've done, but I think it is good and fair to give you sort of some feedback in terms of this whole commercial issue.

[02:40:35] and hope that we maybe can look into that a little bit more clearly as we go forward. Thank you. Council Member Bates. Just an additional comment. In the interest of perhaps having some give and take here, I could see, you know, maybe this is something that you might not necessarily even want to do, given marking conditions, but I could see in exchange for a more significant amount of commercial space going to all two-over-twos, for example, to maintain, you know, the number of units roughly that you've proposed in exchange for

[02:41:14] providing additional commercial space here. Again, ideally at least half what's there, but I also just want to point out that in addition to the five-story hotel that's directly to the south, the office building next to the assembly on the west side of Chambridge Road that basically backs right up to the community there is also four stories so very in keeping with the current character of that area um and additionally the small area plan recommends a maximum of seven stories here so you even have some additional flexibility but i think that four stories

[02:41:49] throughout the site um would certainly be reasonable other questions or comments okay so um i think this is a good project i like it i think townhouses and 202s in this location is going to be very appealing because of its proximity to I-66. I predict they will be sold before they're completed. It also backs, it gives access to the I-66 trail, a very significant, and there are just additions and implementation for the I-66 trail, and this housing is right

[02:42:28] there. As far as the retail, what I see, I see what you see, which is you've got two hotels, You've got the botanist over here, and the retail is probably going to be the services those people want to walk to. That just makes sense, that that's the kind of commercial retail that's going to be there is the kind that serves that community.

[02:42:50] I like the fact that it's so few units because these smaller units on these small parcels give a better opportunity to create a closer community. I mean, you look at some places in Northern Virginia that have townhouses, communities that are just hundreds and hundreds of townhouses.

[02:43:06] And I think with the number, we have other small townhouse developments. It just gives a greater sense of community, I think. But the proximity to I-66 and I-66 Trail are going to make them highly, highly desirable, I believe. And so I really like the project.

[02:43:24] I know you've gone above and beyond on the green space in the linear park, and you're paying attention not only to what the small area plan calls for, you're paying attention to what you've historically heard the feedback from this council on other projects dpi adaptive fitness is in this complex they're on the first floor um i don't know what other businesses are there we have vacancy in the city for like accountants and medical space and things like that but dpi adaptive fitness is a very unique space that has been configured in a in a specific way. And so I think, I haven't spoken with Devin or anyone else over there,

[02:44:02] but the city obviously has plenty of time to work with them to find another location in the city. But, you know, so it's important that we know who our businesses are. I believe that they'll want to stay here in the city, but we're the first step of a hundred. People are now on notice that we need, and I think our economic development team will in fact find spaces for the businesses that want to stay here, and I hope they all want to stay here, but I think the fitness definitely will want to stay here, so I have confidence. I really have confidence in this project and look forward to seeing you come back based on the feedback you've gotten, so thank you very much.

[02:44:43] Before I announce the next item, and it was a little early, but I'm just doing a time check at 945. So our last work session item is a discussion of a request by Combined Courthouse LLC C slash O combined columbia glade llc dash two zero zero four nine for the redevelopment of one zero three zero zero willard way and prince five seven two two zero zero zero four d and three nine two to

[02:45:19] blenham boulevard and prince five seven two two zero zero zero three a i'm going to recognize claire schweiger or city planner for the staff presentation okay moving right along to courthouse Plaza, this is a work session to discuss a redevelopment proposal at 10300 Willard Way and 3922 Blenheim Boulevard. We are currently in the post-submission phase of the development review process, so the applicant has made two submissions of the plan and staff have given the applicant comments on their application. A work session was held with the Board of Architectural

[02:45:55] review on June 3rd and with the planning commission on June 22nd. On the right here is an aerial of the site. The site is bounded by Blenheim Boulevard on the east and University Drive on the west. To the north is Democracy Lane and Plaza Drive and to the south is the library. The site is located in the activity center place type and is subject to the Old Town Fairfax small area plan.

[02:46:28] This site is currently zoned CR Commercial Retail and CG Commercial General in the Transition Overlay District, and the applicant proposes a zoning change to PDM plan development mixed use. The applicant proposes a phase development with Phase 1 including 315 residential units, a 72-foot height maximum, which does require a special exception.

[02:46:56] The applicant has submitted a special exception request to exceed the 48-foot height maximum in the Transition Overlay District, and the small area plan recommends a six-story height maximum on this site.

[02:47:11] Phase 1 also includes 12,500 square feet of first floor retail, roughly 30,000 square feet of open space, a plaza to the east of the existing retail, new landscaping, and two new streets.

[02:47:29] It also includes new and widened sidewalks. The applicant is also requesting a special exception for sidewalks to allow some sidewalks to be narrower than 10 feet. The plan also shows 741 parking spaces in service and structured parking.

[02:47:46] The applicant is also requesting a special exception to reduce the minimum parking ratio from 1.5 to 1.25 parking spaces per residential unit. The plans also include facade updates to the Courthouse Plaza Shopping Center and public art along the proposed Street 1 facade.

[02:48:07] Phase 2 would require a future amendment to the master development plan. So if this application is approved, phase two would need to come back to this body at a future time for approval. In phase two, the applicant proposes 315 residential units, a new north to south street, 50,000 square feet of first floor retail.

[02:48:31] In addition to one of the pad buildings, 90,000 square feet of open space and 980 parking spaces across surface and structure parking. Here are some renderings of the proposed building for phase one.

[02:48:48] These are more renderings. These are renderings of the center that would be refaced. And then on the right image, you can see a proposed plaza to the east of the existing retail.

[02:49:10] And then next steps for this application are plan resubmission and staff review, public hearings with the Planning Commission, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review. And that concludes my presentation. And the applicant is here to present next.

[02:49:29] Yeah, do you want to switch or do you want to, yeah. Sorry, one moment. There you go. Good evening.

[02:49:51] My name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner with Curata Partners, and I'm pleased to be here before you tonight with the Combined Properties team. I have Aisha Hill at the table with me. Significantly to this body, Combined Properties owns four properties in the city, Scout on the Circle in the upper portion of this image, Pickett and Turnpike Shopping centers, and then courthouse, which is what we're talking with you about tonight. This image you saw when I was here before, it shows the area in magenta, which will be removed. That is the only portion of the building that would be removed with this first phase, and then rebuilt with the mixed use building. Everything in green is existing retail that would be renovated with this project.

[02:50:31] We have made significant, significant revisions to this application before this body saw it, since this body has seen it in 2025. Additionally, we've made significant revisions since the images that Clara presented in her presentation. So you're going to see different architecture in my presentation.

[02:50:48] You're going to see additional commitments that we've made because we have been working with staff, the planning commission and BAR over the last six weeks to be able to address their comments. So significantly with this application, we're now rezoning the entire property to the PDM district.

[02:51:04] We've also proposed that second phase, which was something staff had requested before. We've removed several of our special exception requests, including the request for parking. We have upgraded our architecture, so you're going to see a lot of red brick integrated into the buildings.

[02:51:20] You're going to see the commitment that the Safeway gets refaced with this Phase 1. We've also reduced the height of the building at the corner of University and Democracy. Some additional things with landscaping. We've added a central park in Phase 2. We've added a linear park along Blenheim.

[02:51:37] We've really created and established new open spaces and also added interim open space if phase two gets delayed. And then for site conditions, we have removed the pinch point at the sidewalk, so our sidewalks facing public roads are all 10 feet, and we have widened some streets for vehicular traffic.

[02:51:58] But to set the stage, this application is here before you because your small area plan in 2020 asked for this application. it identified this site to be redeveloped to include multifamily apartment buildings up to six stories in height and to be grocery anchored. The area in this image in this part of Old Town had 0% residential in 2020, and that plan called for a 58% mix of residential, and that's again from your small area plan. And so what we've done with phase one is we've focused on the left portion of the project. We've got the parking garage, the interior courtyard, and a mixed-use

[02:52:34] building. That building will have 12,500 square feet of new retail. And all of this green space will be all open space available in phase one with new pocket parks throughout. And then when we come to phase two, what we've done is we've established the street network. We've established the street trees. We've established the building envelope. We hadn't had these details before you when we were here in 2025, but we have now committed to this as a phase two plan to start to show you how the full site could redevelop and this entire site would be rezoned. Additionally, we've shown an additional building on the pad site. That building could locate in different

[02:53:11] areas along that pad site. We could put it along Street 2 or along Blenheim as we've shown. Architecture. This is an image that was in Clara's presentation and is what was included in our second submission to staff back in May. Since that time, we've heard from your BAR and staff, they would like more red brick so what you're going to see is a significantly revised building what this building does is it removes the white brick and it converts any black brick to be an accent material and it integrates red brick throughout these facades democracy university and street one are primarily brick the only element on these buildings besides accents that

[02:53:51] isn't brick is that champagne colored fiber cement so we've really done a significant overhaul with the materials and the color palette. This is a corner of democracy and university. You can see how we've lowered that building height to help with that transition at that corner. And then again, just looking up democracy. This is the Safeway. The top image is what it looks like today. The bottom would show a refaced Safeway, which would occur prior to residential occupancy. And then the overall center being a completely renovated and integrated development. Existing tenants. Yes, we will be relocating existing tenants that are there.

[02:54:28] We have commitments in our application that commit to rent subsidies for tenants in good standings to help them relocate to find other properties in the city. We also have a commitment that we're going to reserve some smaller space in our building for startup customers and to continue to work with your economic development.

[02:54:46] We think those are important commitments, and we're proud to have made them. In terms of connectivity, this site is incredibly porous. This image shows in orange all the vehicular routes through the site, and then all of the pedestrian routes through the site, really interlinking all components of the project.

[02:55:02] These are just going to show some images of these sidewalks around the site. We've got at least 7 feet of walking area on Street 1, and then it enlarges to at least 10 feet of walking area everywhere else, if not 12 feet or wider.

[02:55:18] You've got lots of room for outdoor space, lots of room for tables. And then we've got significant open space today the site only has four point three percent open space It's ridiculous. There's there. It's a surface parking lot at the end of phase one We will have increased that open space to twelve point three percent And then we've added interim open space if by 2035 we haven't moved forward with the next phase that bolsters that open space to thirteen point four percent before bringing it to the twenty percent with the full build-out of phase two just some images to show you and give you that feel of how we've Articulated and really activated the open space retail park along Safeway

[02:55:57] Proposed linear park along Blenheim and then again a reminder of the significant revisions that we've made to this application since 2025 and I'm happy to answer any questions Councilmember Amos. Thank you. This was a great presentation Just to go into some of the likes the the the open space plus the linear park. That's pretty impressive So I appreciate that. I'll come back to the tenant relocation plan shortly My understanding is also you've been in communication with our economic development team, and I see that's included in here.

[02:56:30] That makes me very happy to see. And I think you'll probably hear it from my colleagues as well, but the color scheme is a significant improvement. So I'd really like to see that. For the tenant relocation plan, just for clarification, and this is more just interest rather than anything substantial, for the graduated rent for smaller-scale tenants.

[02:56:49] So where did that idea come from, and what's your ultimate goal with accomplishing that? good evening so the idea originally came from the current situation at courthouse plaza because we do that we wanted the opportunity to redevelop it we were left with below market lease terms so ultimately for less than market rent you could lease our space and instead of 10 years you might get three or five or seven depending on the timing and so there are some tenants that have this gap between what's technically market rent and what they're paying today and so recognizing that

[02:57:29] difference we wanted to be able to you know help people along the way and help our tenants along the way in the event there isn't another below market space available for them that we can help them get there so over a three-year period you know the details still need to be worked out how it would work with the other landlord and that sort of thing but that we would we would fill that gap for them. And then on the other side of that, that there could also be an opportunity for new small businesses coming in or businesses that are currently there today that want to come back

[02:58:02] that might also need, you know, similar assistance as they get started and, you know, are early in their business that this could be a place they could come and start and grow. And would this be just for three years? Are you saying this is kind of like a process you want to implement moving forward over the long term. So for our existing tenants, it would be for three years. It's not something that we could financially handle, you know, into infinity. We could give it a little bit more thought on the new small businesses. Our original thought that it would be a similar

[02:58:37] three-year period. And they could choose to stay, though, in the space, but that their rent would gradually increase over time. And if they chose to stay, they could. Sorry, I asked my question And that's why there's confusion what I mean is for example You have a business that moves in there and they're there for 10 years and they decide to relocate Does the new business coming in get a similar program or would they just go? I'm assuming at the rate that's Existing at that time after 10 years. It would be that new market rate. Okay. Thank you other questions comments on this council member Bates Thank you. So

[02:59:17] certainly, you know, I think that there have been Some improvements here that are much appreciated as well as perhaps some lingering minor questions and issues To be addressed and I understand that you all you know have another submission coming up and but I mainly just want to ask do we have the current Tree canopy percentage as well on the site under current conditions. We are working on getting you that current tree canopy on the site today it's

[02:59:55] The way tree canopy is calculated doesn't necessarily measure the survivability or the quality of that tree. And so rather it takes into account the canopy of the tree. But if you go out to look at that tree, the health of the tree is not always at the standard you would want.

[03:00:14] And so we want to be able to paint an accurate picture for you. And so we will be providing that calculation. But at any rate, I think that the significant increase in open space, you know, particularly where there was simply pavement before, and in a lot of cases, represents a significant opportunity to reduce impervious surface on the site, in addition to, I believe, that there are additional stormwater management improvements proposed as well.

[03:00:45] So I think that's really important for environmental sustainability going forward, as well as, you know, stormwater management. Thanks. Council Member Hall. Thank you. So I want to start with saying this is, in my opinion, very, very much improved.

[03:01:05] I'm really happy to see the changes to the brick. I feel like you're incorporating a lot more of what is our historic Old Town and so many areas throughout the city. Sorry, my voice is going away. I'm having some trouble visualizing some things, and I'm hoping you can maybe help me a little bit.

[03:01:23] I'm also curious, did you, side note, did you happen to meet with the Old Fairfax Muse HOA? We did. A while ago or recently? Two weeks ago, three weeks ago. Okay, but did they see this updated? No, so this is a work in progress, and this is part of what happens in this cycle, right?

[03:01:42] So we had been to the Planning Commission and the BAR before we met with the Old Fairfax Muse. We told them that those bodies had asked us to revise the architecture. We had shown them an interim option that we had shared with the Planning Commission, but said we are still working on this.

[03:01:59] So they have not seen these latest ones. You guys are the first to see them. Okay. I appreciate that. And knowing that, I think some of the concerns that the HOA, I'm sure you heard them. Yeah, I'm hopeful. Some of those have been, I think, moderately addressed in here.

[03:02:16] And this is where I'm going to need a little bit more of a visual. So looking at this picture, Democracy Lane looking east. So this. The flats are on the left. Is that the flats on the left there? That's the flats on the left, yep. I'm standing at university.

[03:02:34] Okay. Looking up Democracy Lane here. Okay, okay, okay. So right now we're at five stories on the front side as opposed to the six that had been previously.

[03:02:52] Yes, so let's, let me go. So this image now, I've moved down a street. So sorry for the confusion. I've moved down a street. This is looking, to the left is university and the flats are in the background behind that ghosted out tree.

[03:03:15] Street, our new street one is to the right here. And so this is kind of our front entrance. I am looking, the old Fairfax Muse is going to be up and to the left. Okay. So I'm on university now. You're on university now. Okay. And so you have here a six-story building along University.

[03:03:33] It drops to five stories at that corner of democracy. On the left side, it drops to five. Okay. Yep. So I appreciate that the landscaping, the way that the darker brick, I guess, is there in the forefront and then the whiter is in the back, I feel like that visually helps a lot with the height feeling.

[03:04:00] um i do still feel like that one section there where it says retail and the apartments is still a little tall i would love to see that knocked down by one story if at all possible but i do understand that you know you need to make a profit and all of that i still think it's a lot of units but visually i think this is much more appealing and in line with what our residents had have been asking for there um this is going to be a clara question or maybe a dan question but i don't think i realize that university drive is going to be going down to one lane to accommodate bike lanes

[03:04:40] i thought we were putting bike lanes on there but we were still keeping two lanes of traffic sorry i'm making we're making you get up a lot tonight and quite honestly i'm not sure i should be answering this i believe i believe it's four it's a four lane section as you get toward north street and then as you come back headed north going by this property down the hill and so forth it transitions to a three lane section where you have a center turning lane and two travel lanes

[03:05:19] but we'll check that our traffic engineer is here and they're nodding their head in agreement okay for the city's plans not our plans correct we've just shown them but they're the city plans yeah i what i will say for the city as large whether it's you guys or the city But we have these nice 10-foot wide sidewalks, which could also be called a shared use path.

[03:05:43] To me, that could be a great place for a bike to go without taking out a total lane on university, recognizing not your situation. But I think we're going to get a lot of pushback when that starts to come out a little bit more. I don't know who I'm looking at, but all of you. So I think this is not depressing looking anymore, to quote the woman that came earlier.

[03:06:05] And I have to agree with her. I mean, I think before it was very, it was just too new, it was too fancy, it was too, all of the things that I don't think were great. I still think it's a lot of units, and I know I've said that a couple different times, and I'm not going to change my mind on that. But I really do want to give you credit for adding in as much of the open space that you have, adding in the green space.

[03:06:29] I don't know what your plans are for, like, the parking, but if there's any way to do some impervious, no, pervious parking spots in some of those areas with, you know, the fancy things as opposed to concrete or asphalt or whatever, I think that's another opportunity to take what is still a pretty large parking lot out in the open.

[03:06:50] I appreciate your, I'm sorry, I'm trying to find the pages here, but I appreciate your efforts to do the kind of the pocket park along Blenheim and some of the other things. What is this? Yeah, sorry. There's a lot of pages. Thank you.

[03:07:07] But there was another there was another spot where you were kind of doing a little bit more of a park feature. There we go. Thank you. So we have this is our phase one commitment that when the multifamily opens and then the darker green on the blenum side here would be an interim park space.

[03:07:24] if for some reason we don't move forward with phase two. Okay. So right now, if you recall, Safeway controls the entire parking field with its lease. So we can't affect those parking spaces any more than what we've already done. But when that lease expires at the end of 2034, we can control that space.

[03:07:42] And so we can commit to turn that into additional open space at that time if we haven't filed a phase two plan. Okay. And does any interior Safeway work get done in any of these proposals? So that's Safeway's decision.

[03:08:02] It is our hope that they will do work on the inside of the building, but they are completely in control of that and not combined, unfortunately. Okay. I figured that was going to be your answer. I do like the brick. I like all the things that you have proposed there. Remind me again, because it's a lot of pages here.

[03:08:19] How many units total are we talking in Phase 1 and Phase 2? It's a total of 315 units per building. And so Phase 1 would be 315. And then if we come forward with Phase 2, it would be 315. Okay, so 630 total. Yes, over a significant time period, right?

[03:08:38] And we're not asking for the approval of Phase 2 of those details now. We are merely committing to the buildable envelope, the street network, the street trees, the open space commitments. But we want the market, we want the city's growth to be able to be absorbed and to really give us guidance on that Phase 2.

[03:08:59] Okay. And I think, again, it's a lot of units, but I do think it's reasonable in the layout and the things that have come out of this newer design with it. Do you know roughly what your breakdown is going to be for one versus two versus three units, bedroom units?

[03:09:20] We can get you the specific breakdown for now. I don't have that in front of me, but we will have the majority one bedroom units. One bedroom? Yes. Okay. Okay. And will there be any, like, amenities on site?

[03:09:36] Can you remind me for the residents that live here? Yes. So there's a structured parking garage, fills the upper part of the interior building, and then it's an interior green courtyard that would have a pool. We've committed to a pool. Indoor? Outdoor pool. Outdoor pool. Okay.

[03:09:52] But it's a courtyard that is internal to the building, right? So it really creates that privacy for those future residents. Okay. And I was happy. There will also be a fitness center and kind of co-working space and a lobby and your traditional, you know, pet spa, bike room, traditional class A apartment amenities.

[03:10:11] I'm sorry, was that pet spa? Yeah, so it's a spot to wash your dog. All right. That's called my shower right now. Right? I know. Okay. Sorry, question just left my head. Oh, I did want to thank you also for reaching out to every single tenant that's in there.

[03:10:27] I have actually heard from a couple tenants this week. I haven't had a chance to respond yet, but I think that the outreach was appreciated. I'm happy to see the plan that you've put in place. And just to make sure I understand what that is, it's a commitment of low for up to three years with pre-negotiated increases of 3% per year.

[03:10:50] So after those, so this would allow them to temporarily relocate, come back into your new space for three years with a 3% increase. Is that correct? So whether the relocation would be up to the tenant.

[03:11:07] so we've committed to um helping them find a new space if they would like um or if they do want to come back into the space then we could help them in that situation as well but it is challenging for tenants to move twice right um so there probably wouldn't be very many that do that but we are open to them coming back if they would like to do that okay and is there any way with the construction and the answer might be no but is there any way that these businesses could stay in place during some portion of the construction like when you're working on the

[03:11:45] i'm going to use the word left because i'm not good with east west with the left portion and those kind of things or is it once you start you start and everything to the left of the safeways is kind of instantly gone oops more than likely everyone will have to vacate for safety reasons We usually have to cut off gas, power, water, and make sure things are safe.

[03:12:08] Okay. Okay. Well, it's never perfect for everybody, right? But I do appreciate what you are doing, and I think it's clear that you have gone above and beyond. I know Phase 2 was not something that you initially wanted to kind of commit to at this point. I know there was a lot of pushback on that from city staff, from members of council as well.

[03:12:26] So I do want to acknowledge that I can tell a lot of extra work has gone into this. So thank you very much. Thank you. Council member McQuillan. Thank you. This is much a much better fit than previous submissions. I really appreciate the work that you all did on changing the colors and the architecture look to it. It looks much more like it fits in this area of our community. I also like the reduced height at the corner of university and democracy. I think that that really does make a huge difference. The 10 foot sidewalks. Thank you. Really appreciate that.

[03:13:06] in the green spaces. I like that as well. The only concern I have, I do like your explanation about your approach and your strategy for phase two and the safe way. If you could do that, that would look great. The only concern I have is density still. It's still pretty, it's still a lot of units there for me. However, it looks like there's, I guess the only question I have then is what community benefit beyond just housing do you see this offering?

[03:13:39] We have a commitment statement. Within that statement, we've made commitments to financially fund the schools, financially fund Parks and Rec. I'm trying to get to the right page. We've made our tenant relocation. Sorry, I skipped right by it.

[03:14:01] The city school fund, we've committed to $1,600 a unit, which is more than other applicants have committed to when we studied this last time. We've got $367 a unit for city recreational amenities. We've committed to up to $305,000 toward undergrounding utilities.

[03:14:18] We've added $10,000 for commemorative signage on the site and a variety of things like that. Thank you so much. And then my last question was that the small area plan in this area, what is the top amount of stories that you can go for this spot?

[03:14:33] It calls for six stories. It's six, and that's what this says, right? Yep, and that's what we proposed. Thank you. I appreciate that. Council Member Peterson? Yeah, just a couple of clarifying questions. I may need a little help from staff on this. I got the presentation this morning at 9 and really didn't have a chance to go through this in detail, so pardon me if I have not been able to capture everything in here and that I'm not able to capture everything with the questions right now.

[03:15:07] But just a couple of clarifications here. You said there's zero residential density or zero residential. What were you referring to again? So in the small area plan, when that was adopted in 2020, it identified that there was no residential.

[03:15:23] I can pull up the page number. No residential in this portion of the small area plan. So it's page 25. The small area plan, it has pie graphs on it, and it noted existing mix of uses and proposed mix of uses. this portion are you talking about the old town fair property old town fairfax small area plan and there's no residential in that area that is what the small area plan document identified on page 25 with a pie chart so when the plan was completed in 2020 there wasn't any but now

[03:15:59] on page 8 of my staff report i have the same table that you saw in my last presentation so there there has been plans approved um since then yeah i think the planning commission commented on 2 000 bedrooms uh in that area so some such figure i was just a little surprised to hear that it's my neighborhood so you know i'm familiar with a lot of residences there um the maybe to go back just just to be a little clear um and again i got the presentation and i i noticed something in it

[03:16:36] that said the small area plan I think it was calls for 1,250 units and it's my understanding this sort of goes back to the earlier discussion this evening that that 1,250 is potential under market conditions but it's not a goal. Right yep that's just an estimate from the small area plan. Okay so it's not really calling for that it's just saying that's a Possibility under market conditions correct. It also is not requiring six stories. It is permitting up to six stories So there's flexibility around that

[03:17:14] Okay, so then the other thing and not to be totally nitpicky here, but the guiding principles for redevelopment I think are really focused on the kinds of Design considerations that you've brought to the site, and I I think you've been working really hard on that It's clear, but I'm just wondering I mean we're acting as a body here to make a public policy decision and Are driven by community interest and public interest in this and I'm wondering are there perhaps this is for staff But there ought to be another set of principles here or a principle anyway

[03:17:52] Related to the public interest and how would you express that in terms of how this meets as a matter of principle public interest to put this particular? Proposal in place and I'm particularly noting there's been a lot of concern about height and density There's also been a lot of concern about the shift here towards residential Versus commercial and the city's overall need for expanding commercial in light of that What what is the principle here in terms of of the public interest for this? So this shopping center has been Not the city's crown jewel for decades and so we think the public interest will be

[03:18:32] represented by redoing this shopping center and creating it to be an active and vibrant community with strong pedestrian and particular connections through it lots of new open spaces and wider and improved street presence along two central drives to the city university and blenham so we we certainly hear a lot there's been a lot of comment on this um you know people love the grocery store etc i think the thing that is being raised that perhaps raises inconsistency with public interest is the heightened density here and the athletics have come a long way but still this is a lot

[03:19:12] in this particular spot there is a lot of development here already a lot of residential development so i i just want to acknowledge that i think we've all heard that there is a lot of concern about that and it's really been raising the question of whether there's some modification That could address the concerns that have been raised about that. I Recognize there have been some changes here. Y'all worked very hard on it, but the first blush it looks very similar in scale To the proposal we've been seeing for a while So and I'm hearing that from others in the community who are seeing this and the general reaction is essentially the same while there have been some

[03:19:50] modifications involved in this and improvements it is essentially the same proposal as was originally presented and that you know is a concern to a lot of people I look forward to spending more time with this and getting a chance to digest this a little bit more but I I would hope that there would yet be a way for us to address some of those concerns I also think that the phase two thing it is very helpful to have made additional commitments around phase two but they're certainly not guarantees and I'm not sure we're yet at the stage where we've seen a layout for what this

[03:20:25] Area would look like under a fully developed approach here. I know that was a recommendation slash concern of staff I'm interested in looking further to see what it to what extent that's actually been addressed, but it would seem to me. It's a valid Request to have a closer understanding of what a full build-out would this look like with of this place would look like as it particularly Pays attention to commercial and restate retail development. Thank you Council Member Hardy-Chandler.

[03:20:59] So there is a great deal of evidence that you have been listening and integrating what you've been hearing into this next iteration of your proposal. I want to echo some of the positives that people have been talking about, the green spaces and those kinds of things, and add to that list that you also listened in terms of concerns about connectivity and the roadway spaces as well as the pedestrian spaces.

[03:21:30] I do think that and I don't have a question my questions have been answered I do think that you are making an attempt to balance what's needed in terms of development against what would happen if you did nothing right and I want to highlight what you were starting to say about that being the public policy of it not being the crown jewel and really looking at how we're UPLIFTING THE WHOLE ACTIVITY AREA. I GET THE CONCERNS ABOUT DENSITY. THOSE ARE DEFINITELY AN ONGOING

[03:22:07] BALANCING ACT AND YET AS HAS BEEN MENTIONED I THINK BY THE MAYOR SEVERAL TIMES YOU KNOW JUST IN TERMS OF HAVING PEOPLE NEAR THE SPACES TO SUPPORT THE RETAIL ASPECTS I THINK IS AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION. SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE THERE And I think that every attempt has been made by your organization, which has invested in the city, which that is another point I want to highlight, that you have made other investments in the city.

[03:22:38] I try not to look at things in isolation. This is yet another investment that you're making in our city to kind of collectively elevate our city. So I appreciate the work that you've done. I appreciate listening.

[03:22:54] THAT'S EVIDENT TO ME. DOING NOTHING IS NOT AN OPTION. AND I THINK I SUPPORTED THIS PROJECT IN ITS PRIOR ITERATION. SO WITH THE ADVANCEMENTS THAT YOU'VE MADE AND SHOWING ONCE AGAIN THAT YOU'RE WILLING TO LISTEN TO THE FEEDBACK, I APPRECIATE THE CHANGES THAT YOU'VE MADE.

[03:23:13] AND I JUST WANT TO HIGHLIGHT THAT. AND AGAIN, FOR ME, NO DEVELOPMENT ON THAT VERY CENTRAL SPOT IN OUR CITY IS AN OPTION And that, I think, goes against public policy for our city. Thank you. Other comments?

[03:23:31] Council Member Peterson? Yeah, just to underscore, I don't think I'm hearing from anybody there's a preference for zero redevelopment here. I think everybody, like many other spots in the city, virtually everybody is interested in that.

[03:23:46] The question is how. And that's really where the feedback has been. So, again, I would hope that we would be able to focus a little bit more on the fundamentals of what that question really involves from the community in terms of what happens here.

[03:24:05] Thanks. Council Member Amos. Last comment I'll make, and it's a quick one, just because I see some similarities to it. And a lot of it's dependent on Phase 1 getting approved and then Phase 2 ideally happening. but that Phase II location does give me elements of Fairfax Quarter in it, and I do appreciate that.

[03:24:26] Other questions or comments? I like the project. I've been looking at the Safeway now for, you know, since 1981, and it is right in the center of our city, and when we talk about getting feedback from the public, that is the point of having a public hearing, and I do expect that we will hear from residents who have a vested interest, including the people across the street who are residents, But I hope we have a robust feedback from our businesses.

[03:24:56] I hope our businesses step up to say what it means to have 360 units right next door or right behind their buildings. The Flats at University was our first foray into having housing in the downtown, which is great. But those students aren't there 12 months out of the year.

[03:25:14] So our summertime doesn't look nearly as active as our fall and our spring. And so I hope our businesses will come out to talk about the economic impact of having housing in this location. We need to hear from everyone, and I do think that is why we have a public hearing.

[03:25:33] And I do want to acknowledge the fact that you didn't have to come back and give us another chance, but you did. And you incorporated so much of what you heard, including the people from the muse who said, I don't like the color. I think you have done your best to negotiate what works financially, and from a property ownership standpoint, what works for combined properties.

[03:26:00] Again, I agree with Council Member Hardy Chandler. You've been deeply invested in our city for six decades, and we appreciate the fact that you keep improving the properties that you own here. It's a long-term relationship, and I want to acknowledge that we appreciate all the work that's gone into this.

[03:26:16] And I do think there is an opportunity through public hearing for people to come and give us more information on this project. But I do like the project. I believe it is in the best interest long term of this city to redevelop this piece of property so close to our downtown.

[03:26:36] It is just something has to happen there. So thank you so much for the presentation, and we look forward to seeing you again. Ms. Shinneberry. okay I will now reconvene the regular meeting and kick it over to our city manager mr. Alexander Thank You mayor council as you know after this meeting will take us into a break for a month and then we will be back for a robust work session on September 1st reminder that is scheduled to start at 4 o'clock

[03:27:13] o'clock you will see a number of items on that work session for a reason and we certainly wanted to try to do as much work shopping as we can on those sessions so you'll see pre-application briefings listed there for 3250 Blenheim 10 560 main street and 3570 chain bridge road we will also bring back city-wide level of service and

[03:27:48] dynamic capital impact modeling for discussion we will make a full way into our legislative program and then we will have a discussion which you'll see on consent later regarding the reappropriation of general operating capital and enterprise funds carrying over to 2027 from 2026 so again that'll be a pretty robust work session on the first looking ahead to the eighth on consent you will

[03:28:23] see a construction contract for university drive bike lanes and the consideration of resolution to cancel the V dot project listed there and then as I mentioned you'll see the introduction or consideration of the resolution for the reappropriation that would have been workshopped on the meeting prior also items not requiring public hearing will be the consideration of adopting the code of ethics on the eighth looking ahead to finishing out September public hearing and council

[03:29:00] action on a redevelopment of existing office into 14 townhouses at Mantua 94 95 Silver King Court and then if needed a public hearing and council action on the resolution for reappropriation on that night and that would wrap up September October would be our second work session starting at four o'clock happy to answer any other questions on items that we've discussed or otherwise are ahead of us all right questions on future council member hall just two questions i

[03:29:40] think um the university drive bike lanes that's the same conversation we just had a few minutes ago can we get a refresher on that did we see that as this counselor was that a previous council am i just totally forgetting that we've talked about it for a while i know but did we do a recent public hearing and all those things i mean i'm sure that was closed out a while ago since we're at the consideration phase but I'm just really wondering and in light of the 10-foot sidewalks that they're considering is there may be a better solution to a shared use path there well we'll what we'll do is come back with some

[03:30:18] information generally about our plan and more information specifically about this ahead of this this meeting well ahead of this meeting so you have that information yeah I mean we don't really have a lot of time because I know we have the August recess I'm certainly open to receiving information in August but okay and I will also do my due diligence and go back and try to check that out my second question and it's just a logistical one is that we have a meeting on October 13th which I think is the final day of the VML conference are we is there any actual conference that day and then we're coming home or

[03:30:56] it's only half day so they wrap up about noon that day so we should be home in time then for a meeting Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Council Member Amos. Just one quick follow-up question. For September 22nd, the Highlands of Mentua project.

[03:31:11] If I'm remembering that correctly, I remember, gosh, I don't know if that was a pre-application that we did or was it a post-submission? I mean, I think that was last year, if I recall correctly. And that's the one where we had the conversation about whether to keep the tree landscaping there or they wanted to put it in a park, if I recall.

[03:31:32] Yes, I believe you are correct. That application has now gone to the Planning Commission. There will be a communication to each of the members of council and the mayor for individual meetings to give you an update on that project from the development team.

[03:31:53] And then any questions you may have. Thank you. Just because it feels like it's been a pretty significant gap in time between when we spoke with them. Again, I think it was last year versus this coming up in September. So, thank you. Yes, sir. Other questions?

[03:32:09] Councilmember Hall? Are we going to talk about the buck slip at another time, or is this the right time? We can. I had it on the report out, so I can kill two persons. We can talk about it then. That's fine. Thank you. Councilmember Peterson? Can you clarify the purpose and scope of the citywide level of service and dynamic capital impact model?

[03:32:35] I want to set expectations for what we will be receiving. is the actual purpose and substantive application of that yeah we previously i think presented in a work session to council but i'll go to the bullpen and ask brooke to come up again and this would be an update to that previous work session that council held which was more of an introduction to the project and um a review of what the effort would be undertaking and and what factors would

[03:33:11] be analyzed as part of part of the project this is to come back and share results of that analysis it would not be a moment where we would ask for council approval in terms of considering proffer policy or anything of that nature we would anticipate that based upon this discussion the council would give staff feedback on those results and whether there's a desire to to move forward with considering policies in terms of level

[03:33:47] of impact to various city infrastructure and so that would be a future discussion and so this will be to share the results to give a sense of what those impacts are how those numbers calculate and whether there's a desire to continue to move forward to look at policies that would be part of the city's development review process let me understand if i might a little bit more clearly is this providing guidance

[03:34:21] and benchmarks related to proffers potentially okay so potentially that is this designed to be a regulatory impact or public policy impact assessment tool it is a development impact assessment tool and so the team has analyzed what expenditures are associated with development proposals what that means in terms of

[03:34:56] the city infrastructure and whether or not there are you know what those financial impacts are and so a level of service study would would provide to the city on a per project basis what those impacts would be to things like parks and recreation facilities school facilities transportation infrastructure public safety infrastructure and that analysis could guide the city toward a

[03:35:32] proper policy for all of those items you know what what the approach has been to this point has been those have been negotiated on a case-by-case basis and not to get too deep into the proper thing I think we've talked a little bit about that before but the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2016 rewrote the rules in the state for proffers which severely limited locality's ability to negotiate for proffers. Since that time, we've instituted some measures that have given us a little bit

[03:36:05] more flexibility to do that. And so we've seen the potential for proffers to be offered, particularly in our activity centers, because the Code of Virginia carves out special provisions for areas covered by small area plans. And so that gives us some more ability to negotiate these things what we would like to do is be a little bit more systematic in how we do that and so it's not an unknown to the council it's not an unknown to a property owner or developer coming in as to what those expectations are but that

[03:36:42] will be totally at the discretion of the council this first discussion is to merely share the results of that analysis if the direction from the council from that point forward is yes staff we would like you to to look at creating some policies that again could come back to the council and we consider whether that's something that the council wants to adopt that's what we'll do is this an accounting tool so that we know when we're looking at a project from an accounting standpoint what the outlays outlays and expenditures are for a

[03:37:18] particular decision we make is that correct accounting on who's on whose Citywide accounting, I mean services and infrastructure from an accounting standpoint, the public accounting standpoint, what are we spending as a consequence of a decision on a development? Is that the question this is answering?

[03:37:35] Not necessarily. That's something that the city does currently. So the city does a fiscal impact analysis for each one of the significant projects that come forward to the council. that's part of your staff report that you see at a public hearing that accounts for anticipated revenues and expenditures for any development and looking at the city's budget and what those costs are to the city and then in terms of the development proposal what revenues that that we anticipate coming in so that's a

[03:38:07] part of what we do today and that looks at city costs kind of across you know across the entirety of the budget the level of service would look at physical impacts would look at infrastructure impacts things that the city can potentially get proffers for city can't get proffers for operational costs the locaties can get proffers for physical infrastructure and expansion of capacity of physical infrastructure that's associated with the development

[03:38:44] that's being proposed and so the level of services looks more at the AT THE INFRASTRUCTURE SIDE OF THE EQUATION, NOT SO MUCH THE OVERALL FISCAL IMPACT, BUT THAT IS PART OF WHAT THE COUNCIL RECEIVES AS WELL. IS THIS SOMEWHERE IT ALREADY IS SCOPED AND WE CAN LOOK AT ITS CURRENT STATUS IN TERMS OF WHAT IT'S COVERING?

[03:39:06] IS THERE SOMETHING THAT I COULD READ, FOR INSTANCE, OR ANYBODY ELSE COULD READ ABOUT THE SCOPE OF THIS? We can certainly share the materials that we brought forward previously. We don't necessarily have the materials that will be presented in September ready to bring forward yet, but we'll share those as soon as they're available as well.

[03:39:32] Well, that would be real helpful. I mean, I think the general thing is on February 14th, I think, we had a discussion about development and land use applications, and the city manager listed out a whole series of impacts that could and typically are included in assessments of the full suite of impacts associated with a development or land use application, safety, crime risk, you name it, right down the list here.

[03:40:03] And that sounds like that, you know, it's a set of socioeconomic impacts, public impacts here. This would provide only the fiscal dimensions of that with respect to services and infrastructure, but this is really not what impact are we able to determine in terms of the effect of these decisions on elevated crime risk and the response that we'll have to engineer in terms of things like that.

[03:40:39] Is that a fair understanding? Yes. Okay. So there's a broader piece of this that this really is not looking at. I would like to see if I might, and I'm sure everybody would, what that is because I think there is a broader question mark about how we assess from a public interest standpoint the impacts and the opportunities associated with these decisions we make, and it would be great for that to be as inclusive as possible.

[03:41:07] I think we send you what we have up at this point. I'd also say at this point also that we'll offer each of you an opportunity to have a conversation with the head of the work session Which will benefit the conversation at the more session that that would be great and it would be great if there could be With respect to the fiscal impact analysis that we do now a little bit of transparency in terms of what's actually in that I would love to see that. Thanks any other questions or comments on the future meeting

[03:41:40] Topics seeing none. We will go to the the manager's report out. Thank you mayor council As was mentioned earlier. We did send you This morning a what's called in buck slip informational item buck because it's the size of a dollar that we would like to Maybe include in the personal property tax bills that will be mailed out in September The idea is to give us some more transparency and information on how our general fund dollars are spent and investments are made both in operating and capital we provided you an

[03:42:18] example in the the timeliness issue really is one of I know the treasurer's office wanted to know we had consensus from council before we coordinated with them in order to push that out and so this is an opportunity to get some feedback from you on that item so that we can quickly turn it around and again to coordinate the process of getting that out to our residents so happy to take any feedback from you on what you saw and what you might want to see out of that understanding it's it's this big so councilmember Hall and then

[03:42:54] councilmember Hardy Chandler thank you I know I've been asking for this for a while and I think actually with the interim so I'm really really happy to see that this is moving forward I really just have two suggestions one is maybe just add a thank you for paying your taxes and also on the back side of it there's an area on the bottom right where it had the percentages of certain things and there was a bit of a area available I'm wondering if maybe we could add a QR code that would direct people to the

[03:43:28] fiscal year 2027 budget and just say you know here's here's a link to this hopefully that won't add too much extra effort but that was just my suggestion to you know kind of here's the basic information and then if you want more information here it is nice easy ready to go thank you and councilmember Hardy Chandler I think I responded that I absolutely support this I think the visual helps people understand that it's not going into a black hole it really is going to services and how those services are divided so I absolutely support that is there any Any question of the cost of adding that to the mailing of the bills?

[03:44:09] No, we just wanted to ensure that we got consensus from council before we approached the treasurer again on this process. Well, I think it will be very beneficial to all of the residents of the city. So thank you very much. Council Member McQuillan? Yeah, I love this idea ever since Council Member Hall brought it forth.

[03:44:29] I think this is great. Thank you so much. Any other feedback? Council Member Peterson? Well, I think this is a separate thing. It kind of gets to the last conversation, but it would be great to kind of boil this down to a communications format because every time we make a decision here, it has, well, not every time, but very often it has out-of-pocket expense implications on residents.

[03:44:55] And I like to use the term neighborhood math. People need to understand if you do this, what's coming out of my back pocket next year. it would be great to be regular about lifting that information out of the decisions we make so that people who are tuning in can know, and we need to invite other people to tune into that.

[03:45:17] So I don't think this is exactly the same thing, but I think they're related. I would say also it's not just a matter when we make decisions of the out-of-pocket expenses that people are facing as a consequence of it, but just a reminder, We're also helping people save, reduce those out-of-pocket expenses.

[03:45:35] We've done energy, you know, clean energy things that are actually cost savings things. And then we've done things that proactively are designed to increase revenues, commercial economic household, et cetera. It just would be good from a communication standpoint for a resident to know when we make decisions, what's the plus and the minus, you know, that's going on here.

[03:45:56] And, again, that has to be in terms they can understand. And what they typically understand very well is what's coming out of my back pocket this year. So I know we don't have that exactly, and that may be ground for further creative thinking, but I just wanted to suggest it.

[03:46:12] Any other comments? I think that we have consensus that the idea is good. It is helpful for people to visualize where their dollar goes. So I think you've gotten feedback.

[03:46:28] And other than that, I think we're all nodding in agreement that this is a go. Thank you. anything else mr. city manager that's it thank you that's it for you okay then we will do the council comments councilmember Amos thank you so looking over to Melissa she wanted to quickly go over the the BACs and setting up that for August I believe thank you councilmember Amos so each of you have a printout of the first two pages are vacancies that's going to be advertised in the August city scene as you see on the second page it's the h cab 17

[03:47:07] positions that are coming up for reappointment or appointments on the third page is the applicants I have on deck that would be ready to be interviewed there are 20 people listed on here and I'm bringing this forward because a council member had brought this up last week about maybe doing an August interview night so I wanted to get feedback if there'd be a consensus or at least for council members that would be available in august and i would say either the we keep it on

[03:47:40] a tuesday either the 11th 18th or the 25th because next week's national night out okay so feedback and we'll just start with council member amos august is a bit of a rough month for me so it's unlikely i'll be able to however if i were to be able to finesse it it would need to be towards the end of the month so the 18th or the 25th if we stick with tuesday okay council member Hall I would prefer not the 25th as our kids go back to school the day before so I am otherwise the 11th or the 18th work fine for me okay councilmember

[03:48:19] Hardy Chandler I believe I can do the 18th okay councilmember Peterson I'm flexible okay councilmember Bates any of those work for me oh sorry the 11th or the 18th please okay it looks like the 18th is the winner okay and just next question like I said I have 20 people on deck is there a certain amount you want to bring that

[03:48:48] night because we do for an hour so that's a long time I can council member Peterson so I'm looking at the list and if I've got it right 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 like 12 or 13 are housing and healthy communities advisory board did I get that right so some of them have long titles because they represent a certain position on there so really on there there's let me get my glasses on okay yeah my eyes are not my eyes are not working there's like six right now okay yeah thank you

[03:49:24] gosh that was hard to figure out well there's yeah i didn't want to you know just put names on there i wanted to at least you know show like what position they represent but i wonder whether that's sort of a stack that we might set aside and do that's a bunch of folks and if we split it So that somehow or another, we weren't doing them all at once.

[03:49:43] That would be an option for that being set aside. So their terms are not open until January, yes? So on the last page, I have a list of all the applicants who would be reappointments for the rest of the year. They vary.

[03:50:00] Some terms end in September, October, November, or December. Okay, okay. I think my suggestion would be pull out the Housing and Healthy Communities Advisory Board and do them separately, and then we could probably get everybody else in one night.

[03:50:19] Okay. I agree with that. If everybody else agrees with that. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's all I need. I'll get back on the date. We can just see. Well, we'll see. Okay. We can do the 18th, since everybody's pretty much on the 18th. Mm-hmm. Okay.

[03:50:35] We can start at 7, or we can start at 6. Your preference. For me? Okay. 6? Okay. Yeah, I was like, don't chime in unless you're definitely going to come. Right, right, right. Oh, right, I forgot. It's still on me. Okay.

[03:50:52] Thank you. All good. So pivoting back real quick, another, I guess, calendar clarification doesn't need to be during council comments. I know Brian Lubcomen responded to us about the Pickett's Reserve visit on Saturday. So if folks want a message on how we want to go about that, we can handle that separately.

[03:51:11] So I'll just mention that. Last two items, National Night Out, just wanted to celebrate our police and thank the communities who are hosting for them next week. And shout out to Courtside Ty on your 20 years of activity and serving the great citizens of Fairfax City.

[03:51:29] So thank you. Council Member Hall. I want to thank Ornery for many, many years of service to our city. Very, very sad to see them close. It seems to be a tough spot there. And I loved you when you were upstairs.

[03:51:45] I loved you when you were downstairs. And I'm just sad to see you go. and i don't really have much else prepared i wish everyone a quiet month in august while we don't have council meetings i'm sure staff will appreciate the somewhat hiatus of dealing with all of us on a weekly basis we'll make sure to check in i promise um and as i said earlier to my colleagues i just want to thank you all for your flexibility for our remote participation policy with the things that were going on with my dad things are definitely looking up he went on on as a first solo walks and things are good.

[03:52:22] And if I owe you an email, it will be coming this week, I promise. And I know we had difficult conversations tonight with regard to the ADU conversation, but I do want to say that I think we had respectful conversation.

[03:52:41] I think we were all able to share our thoughts and feelings in a way that, you know, is what we should be doing on council here, whether we disagree or agree at the end of the evening it you know we're all able to still get together and laugh and do the other things which makes me think I think we're also due for a night out to our planner over here on the right I got you all right councilmember Hardy Chandler I hope everyone enjoys a restful break except for breaking the break for other tasks looking forward to national night out I'll look forward to

[03:53:15] trivia and idea if we do get together happy summer councilman Peterson well Well, likewise, I think everybody deserves a good break, and I hope they take advantage of it. So I, believe it or not, was the last customer to leave Ornery on its last night on Sunday.

[03:53:34] Yeah, very sad. But I had a long conversation with the owner, and as it turns out, it's been a little bit of a busy week because just happenstance had long conversations with other restaurant owners in Old Town.

[03:53:53] some past, recent, and some current. And I think the kind of sense that came out of all those conversations is that there is a conversation that hasn't exactly happened yet with that community about what their needs are and how they might be met.

[03:54:13] And I think, in their view, it ain't so easy. There are multiple factors at play here, And I just wanted to suggest that we find a way somehow or another to have that conversation.

[03:54:29] That is perhaps something our economic development director could help with. I'm not sure. But I think my sense from talking with all of them, and these are people who are pretty capable business analysts as well as being entrepreneurs, they had kind of an advanced sense of the challenge that they're facing and they're looking for a way to kind of unpack that in some meaningful way so i'd like to encourage us to find a way to do that because it's you know it's tough uh people put their lives into these businesses um it's interesting the the one thing

[03:55:07] that small business people have in common according to mckenzie is that they work all the time and they go to the gym regularly and this is a set of people who's an example of folks who work all the time and to see this cycle kind of happen where people have to check out because They're not able to keep up is a hard thing. So I just want to shout out for them I certainly feel that feel their pain and want to do everything we can here to be helpful for them. Thanks councilmember Bates. I just want to wish everyone a

[03:55:40] Happy national night out and echo councilmember Amos's comments thanking our local police. Thank you Councilmember Quillen. I, too, am looking forward to National Night Out, and I also was able to visit Ornery before they closed their doors this weekend, and we'll be sad to see them go.

[03:56:01] Wishing all of our staff a great month off. Thank you. Okay, and I want to remind everybody that Frozen, the City of Fairfax Theater Company's production, is currently playing, and we'll be going with the grandchildren to see that on Saturday the 1st.

[03:56:19] So I encourage everybody to go see Frozen. I know you know all the words to the songs. We also have restaurant week from August 20th to 30th. So please, please support our local restaurants. Speaking of our local restaurants, get out there, try some new ones, take friends and family. We did that in this particular time period because the George Mason students are returning to the campus on August the 26th. And please always keep in mind that Fairfax City is in fact George Mason University's hometown. So we need to kind of represent out there, welcome the students and their parents back when we see them around

[03:56:53] town, and with that, I am going to adjourn the meeting at 10.57 p.m. on Tuesday.

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