Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Monday, July 6th, 2026 meeting of the Arlington County Planning Commission. There is no recess meeting scheduled on Wednesday, July 8th. I am Commissioner Nia Bagley, Chair. Tonight we will discuss the following agenda items. CIP, Capital Improvement Program, Fiscal Year 27 through 2036. Administrative Regulations on Adaptive Reuse and Standard Site Plan Update Processes. Site Plan Amendment PDSP Adaptive Reuse 601701 12th Street South, and Site Plan Amendment Number 429-1401 Wilson Boulevard, and Ordinance to Vacate. A few pointers before we get started for participants. Presenters and speakers joining the meeting through Microsoft Teams, please keep your phones and other electronic devices muted until you are called upon by the clerk. Please turn off the sound to any devices around you to minimize interference and keep your cameras off until the clerk announces your name to speak. When called upon, you must unmute yourself by clicking on the microphone icon that is in the meeting command bar at the top of the screen. Neither the moderator nor the clerk have the ability to unmute your mic. Once you have spoken, please mute your mics and turn your cameras off. If you are dialing in by phone to join the meeting, press star six to unmute. Public speakers will be called upon by the clerk at an assigned time. Pre-registration with email confirmation is required to speak at tonight's hearing. We cannot accommodate additional speakers. All speakers, virtual, hybrid, or hybrid, and hybrid, will receive two minutes to comment as an individual. Only representatives of a county board-appointed advisory group, committee, and or commission will receive three minutes to comment. A timer will be displayed on the screen of speaking virtually and speakers in person will follow the timer stationed on the podium. Audio for tonight's meeting is available via phone. If commissioners, presenters or speakers lose internet connectivity, please reconnect by phone. However, if you are dialing in by phone and unable to see the screen, we will provide an audible 30 second warning to wrap up your comments. You will be muted when your time has expired. The meeting chat is active for presenters or commissioners who need technical assistance only. Please do not use the meeting chat for discussion, public comment, questions about agenda items, or requests for further information. All public comments must be shared verbally for the record during the assigned public testimony period. Tonight's meeting will be available for review through the YouTube platform. A link will be provided on the Planning Commission website 24 to 48 hours after the adjournment of the meeting. Although the meetings will no longer be a live broadcast, the meetings will be available for review with closed captioning on Comcast Xfinity channels 25 and 1073 and Verizon Fios channels 39 and 40, 24 to 48 hours after the adjournment of the meeting. Lastly, this is a public forum. Tonight's meeting will be recorded and posted to the county website via a link to YouTube, as stated. All information associated with tonight's meeting, whether written or spoken, is subject to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act requirements. I do believe we have Commissioner Lantomi joining us online, correct?

That's correct, and I am here.

Thank you, Commissioner Lantomi. Before we actually call our official, our tonight's agenda, we do have a special guest that we would like to recognize. We're very pleased to welcome and honored to welcome the Honorable Matt DeFerranti, who is the chair of the Arlington County Board and coincidentally the liaison this year to the Planning Commission.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will be brief. Two minutes is more time than I think I need. I just wanted to take a moment to join you. I've gotten to know each of you through the process of applying for the Planning Commission. I have not stood before the Planning Commission, but I I'm deeply appreciative, grateful for your work. I know the work amount that's involved, and I'm very grateful for your service. Just a couple of thoughts. First, as tonight's agenda shows, we're in a different planning moment. And I hope that three, four, five, seven years from now, you'll look back and say, you were part of that moment where adaptive reuse was being considered. It's certainly economically as part of the structural adjustment, which is a term from the World Bank years and years decades ago but it is we are structurally adjusting our economy to fit the new moment and so i hope you're proud of that i had four priorities this year economic recovery and positioning for us for growth was that and i would say adaptive reuse is at the center of that site plans of course continue to be essential and grateful for your work there public safety serving our most vulnerable and then keeping The things that the attributes are schools and other things that have helped make Arlington great, including our work on climate, which I know is a piece of your work. So those are really the points I wanted to make other than just to reiterate the thanks you have. I always synthesize the Fridays and Thursdays before board meetings using the planning commission's work as the center. I think you know by now that that doesn't mean I refer to every piece or you refer to every piece of what you're looking at. but it is a critical part of preparation and we are deeply grateful for your work and leadership. And I hope that's in less than two minutes, Madam Clerk. But I'm happy to take questions if you dare. I'm also, given the hour and the next hour, that's why I say if you dare, but I am also grateful for our staff who's here and the applicants who are part of the business that make us work. And so I truly will create space either now or as I think each of you has gotten to know during the daytime whenever to try and talk with you. But any questions, I'll leave it back to you, Madam Chair.

Does anyone have any questions? Is there anything that we as a commission can do to better spool up our recommendations to the board, in your opinion?

I would say that the thoroughness of the written piece in working together with the brevity of what you guys present. I always know when you come and present that we can ask questions, but I honestly feel as though it actually helps us focus better on the issues that are there with the brevity of what you present to us. And brevity kind of pulls you into saying, what are the most important issues that you discussed? And so actually this year, as much as any, really have been grateful for the conciseness. And it's really helpful also for the board as we need to do site plans in a time that is efficient while also fully airing all the issues that are present. But I actually think this has been as good as it's gotten in the seven and a half, eight years that I've been doing this and super grateful for that piece of it in addition to all the work.

Well, again, on behalf of the entire Planning Commission, we're very honored to have you here tonight. Thank you for taking time out of what I know is your very busy schedule to come and say hi to us. We appreciate that.

Sure thing. And I also am grateful. I'm mindful that it's not for the compensation that you are here tonight.

Oh, yes. It's the big bucks here.

Deeply, deeply grateful for your service and continued work. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, please call the first agenda item.

Thank you, and thank you, Board Chair. I really appreciate that myself. Our first item is the Capital Improvement Program, CIP FY2027 and 2036. We have Richard Stevenson and Kyle Scott, the Department of Management and Finance staff, to present this item this evening. Thank you.

Well, thank you for having us here this evening. I'm going to go through a slightly truncated version of the manager's proposal that we put out in May. So to begin, the capital plan for FY 2027 through 2036 is a $4.3 billion capital plan, which is a slight decrease overall from the 25 to 34 plan. The fiscal constraints and uncertainties we expect over the next few years has required us to be very mindful of the annual increase in debt service, which is funded by the General Fund and competes for resources with all the critical human service programs, operations of public safety, and all the other important county operations. This CIP limits this debt service growth to under 5% annually and, like schools, recognizes the revenue pressures expected over the next few years. And you can see from this graph just the breadth of areas that we fund in the CIP. And I'll talk about each of these areas as we move through the presentation. So as we have had work sessions with the board, we've outlined five key areas which we considered in the development of the CIP. We were very mindful of the year over year fiscal impact on debt service growth, as I just mentioned, and projections for interest rates and inflation impacting costs. Obviously, the second principle is to meet our regional obligations, most notably Metro. but also in areas impacted by the regulatory environment. And of course, cornerstones of this community is our support of the environment and community resiliency in all of its forms. And we also need a plan which can respond to and address emerging service demands. And then finally, an area which we have talked a lot about through this process is the need to invest in maintaining what we have. There are many different types of community assets which need to be maintained and reinvested in this 10 year proposal. So talking briefly about the debt service increase, this slide shows the breakdown of debt service for the county and schools. You'll see the line right below the box with an arrow is the county debt service growth, which is approximately growing four and a half percent annually beginning in fiscal year 28. And the debt service required for that growth is an incremental annual cost of four to $5 million. Schools is projected to increase similarly in the first half of the CIP before flattening out in the later years. And so combined debt service growth for county and school over the 10 year period is 4%. Next, we have the four policies that control the county's bond issuance. For all four, we remain within the policy limits. While the fourth factor growth in the debt service was the most important to the manager with respect to the current CIP and the focus on limited debt service growth in light of the ongoing pressures that we expect for the operating budget and revenues. So this slide shows the FY, sorry, the calendar 2026 proposed bond referenda for this fall. where we will go to the voters for approval of just over $182 million on the county side. And you can see the breakdown of the general government areas for a variety of different programs, community infrastructure, local parks and recreation, and metro and transportation. And the school is also requesting an $80 million new referendum authority this fall. show this graphic just to highlight it kind of encapsulates all the various elements in the cip whether it's our water sewer to park and recreation to the neighborhoods program this is the county cip down on the lower left is a school so really sort of captures all the main program funding areas so starting off with facilities the county's real estate footprint includes 90 county buildings and over 2.4 million square feet with about a third of the buildings over 50 years old. So a lot of infrastructure to support and maintain and keeping our buildings in good condition is paramount for the safety and comfort of our community and employees. Just drilling down a little more. I'm not going to read all of the projects on these slides and slides to follow, but you can see the number of examples of investment in county facilities in the proposed CIP. On the left are some significant investments in the Courts Police Building across the street, as well as funding the Thomas Building where the Homeless Service Center is located with the expansion of the fourth and fifth floors. On the right are some other projects, noting Thomas Jefferson Community Center. I will time that project with the school's renovation project. And some others are Garage and Ballston needs some significant work now that a study has been completed. And of course, areas that you all are very involved in, some planning, whether that's on Langston Boulevard or Carlin Springs. Next, we have transportation. This slide shows a snapshot of all the various things involved in transportation. The CI provides resources to help us manage and maintain a safe, accessible, and reliable multimodal transportation system. So again, the next slide shows the huge investment that the county makes in this area, totaling $1.5 billion, and that's excluding the Metro commitments, which I'll highlight on the next slide. So transportation covers paving of $126 million, maintaining our pavement condition, the importance of our Street Safety Improvement Program, SSI, along with bridge replacements, and all the work of sidewalks, curb and gutter, and proactive, gutter proactive zone. Leveraging external funding, the Arlington Transit Program includes 451 million for a variety of various projects.

And you can see some of the significant ones there in the blue box on the right that are included in this 10-year CIP.

I mentioned Metro. So over 10 years, the county's projected contribution totals 442.6 million. We fund this need primarily with a combination of GO bonds and state transit aid. So the CIP includes $251 million or about $25 million annually in GO bonds to meet those needs and almost $192 million in state transit aid. And so for this, the bond referendum, which I talked about, will be requesting the voters approve $46.3 million for Metro. Next, we have Park and Recreation. this graph just illustrates all the different things that are encapsulated in the parks program, whether that's the natural space to the playgrounds, to the dog parks, et cetera. There's a whole host of infrastructure that we need to maintain in this area. And then again, on this next slide, the total is just over $286 million, number of parks ongoing programs with emphasis in the parks maintenance capital program, refreshing our synthetic field program, land acquisition of $15.5 million, along with some other programs with trails, emerging uses, and the quartz program. Then on the right, you can see a number of the significant projects that we will be working on over the next 10 years with Quincy Park. We have Roslyn Gateway and the boathouse just down the hill from us. really having projects that really span across the whole county. An area that the public doesn't see so much, but is critical to the functioning of our governmental organization is technology. We have investments here of over $262 million, and what they include are enterprise systems technology. This is all the workforce devices, the servers, all the back office things and some of our large programs that we support, whether that's the treasurer's revenue collection systems or records management. Also included here are public safety communications and IT applications, vehicles and equipment. So nearly 48 million for public safety vehicles. This is mostly fire heavy rescue, along with 16 million for emergency response commitment equipment across all of our public safety agencies. Next, we have the managers proposing funding for the Arlington Neighborhoods Program, formerly the Neighborhood Conservation, totaling just over $77 million over the next 10 years. With existing authorized funding, we'll cover construction of projects previously approved, and it's projected that new bond funding requirements will not be needed until FY29. And then as we move through the CIP, ramping up to the historical levels by 2033. Next, we have the utilities fund of almost a billion dollars, focusing on our water and sewer infrastructure. The largest category in this area is our maintenance, totaling $408 million, and it includes the support of the Washington aqueduct, which increased to 151.5 million to previously, it was previously deferred as well as currently planned capital projects at that facility. And then of course we have our water distribution system and our water pollution control plant investments. And then finally, we have the stormwater of over 265 million. These investments include the capacity improvements across all our watersheds, maintenance capital for mains and culverts, and funding to enhance our stream and water quality, which flows into the Potomac. So in developing the 10-year capital plan, we received input from over 1,800 people who weighed in on their top priorities for maintaining major infrastructure investments. And that was in streets and parks, technology, critical infrastructure. Residents provided feedback online and also through several pop-up events at strategic locations around the county, receiving input from a good cross-section of our community. And then our last slide shows the overall CIP timeline. We are now at the tail end of the CIP process with just over two weeks to go. A couple of dates to note. We've already had a number of work sessions with the board through June. Tomorrow night is our public hearing on the CIP in this room. And then next Monday will be the final board markup scheduled for July 14th with the board adopting the plan on July 21st. And so with that speed round of PowerPoint presentation, I'll turn it back over to the chair. Questions.

Thank you for your brevity this evening. We appreciate that. The matter is now in front of the, well, let me ask, do we have any public speakers?

We actually have one public speaker.

Okay, great.

Thank you. Ms. Jean Hensworth, if you could come forward, please, to the podium.

There's a button on the microphone at the bottom as well.

Got to turn it on. How's that? That's better. Great. Thank you. Good.

Madam Chair and fellow commissioners, my name's Jean Hensroth, and I'm immediate past president of Leeway Overly Civic Association, and I'm here tonight to talk about Lee Center. No surprise. I was recently delivering our newsletter and stopped to talk to an 80-ish-year-old woman, admire her garden, and discuss Lee Center. She told me about the belly dancing class she had taken there and how much she admired the 90-year-old woman who had been in that class. And you members of the Arlington Planning Commission, you spend massive amounts of your personal time serving Arlington at no pay. I'm asking you to listen to your public, not just me to better serve us. Arlington has a loneliness crisis, partially due to the lack of community gathering spaces, which can be mitigated by providing more community facilities. I urge you to recommend to the County Board, CIP funding for lease sooner than fiscal year 2035 to 36, to restore this former community hub and make it an example of Arlington's ability to renew, repurpose, and revitalize. Programs should serve the community. But don't just listen to me. In a June 29th Oral Now article, Scott McCaffrey described the building situation and the struggles it faces with capital funding timing. When posted on Nextdoor, the article queried, what creative ideas do you have for the future use of the formerly community center? As of yesterday morning, 18 Arlington residents responded from 10 civic associations and four non-Arlington residents responded. More have since then, but the overwhelming responses were restore the building to what it was and restore the arts and senior programs. Quote, it was a hub for senior programming in Western Arlington. At the June 23rd board CIP facilities work session, a DES rep confirmed that when the board recommends it, DES has capacity to manage this project. Also, that the county prefers utilizing its existing building portfolio in lieu of erecting new buildings. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Do we have any commissions speaking on this? No? Okay. All right. So now, yes, the matter is in front of us. Are there questions? Commissioner Strainer?

I do have one. So I noticed with this sort of the debt service, the projections sort of increase and then they taper off in the out years. And I'm curious, what is driving that sort of tapering off and the decline in the out years for the debt service?

Well, we were trying to structure the growth in debt service and the timing of the various projects. And so that was just sort of that natural curve, so to speak, that happens at the tail end of the CIP.

And that's because we don't have projects that are geobonds that are set to continue through that timeframe?

Oh, their projects will continue all through that. So that's kind of it. All right. Thank you.

Commissioner Garcia.

Yeah, a question for staff based on what we just heard from our public speaker. Can you talk a little bit about the where, I guess there was a, you know, ask about the Lee Community Center. Where is that resourcing laid in in the plan? Can you describe that a little?

Yeah, we had, the manager had a lot of conversations with the, with staff, even before we proposed the CIP, and then trying to balance where projects would fall. And this, THIS PROJECT GOT PUSHED TO THE BACK END OF THE CIP AS IT WAS NOTED SO IT'S AT THE VERY END OF OUR CIP JUST TO FOLLOW UP BUT IT IS IN THE CIP THE INTENTION TO KIND OF RENOVATE AND I GUESS RESTORE IT THERE'S MONEY FOR LANGSTON BOULEVARD AS A PROGRAM AND SO FUNDS FOR could potentially be used from that allocation. There's not a specific allocation going toward the old lease center, the LAC center in the CIP.

Thank you.

Commissioner Huber.

So I think I saw 19 million. Is that what on your slides, I believe, 19.5 million.

Yes. Well, it's at the back. Yeah, at the back end of the CIP is 19 and a half million.

Okay. And what would it take for it to potentially, just from hearing our public speaker, how much that center means to the community? And particularly there, there's a dearth of community centers. And as you may know, a lot of the teenagers don't have a place to go after school. They end up going to Safeway or there's just not enough community space. And more importantly, the green space that we would potentially be losing if the county, depending on what the county plans to do with the center, is there a possibility at all for this to move faster? I know there's going to be some trade-offs that we obviously, and it's a constrained fiscal environment, but I'm just curious about the decision-making process.

I think you hit the nail on the head. There's trade-offs. There's either we push another project out if we were to maintain our current assumptions on debt service growth, or if the board wanted to accelerate that, it would just change the financial assumptions for how much that growth would be in the out year. So yeah, that's a good choice.

Yeah, no, thank you for that. I would just like to say, I do think that because of the green space that it provides also tree canopy and supports some of our greater goals, county goals. So I think it's really important just to sort of bring to light how important it is for us to consider. That's all I have.

Commissioner Berkey.

Yeah, apologies. I'm trying to look this up on my own, but I don't know if you have a sense of this. So it's approximately $80 million in the current proposal for the neighborhoods program, like approximately, right? Do we have a sense historically from the last CIP where that number landed Is that like up a little bit?

Is that on par? It's actually down because we were in the previous CIP, we were assuming that there would be, what, $7 million executed each year. They haven't had that level of execution, so they have approved bonding capacity already, so we don't need to go to the voters this fall for new debt authority. Yeah, so the manager didn't.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. This is not a question. It's more of a comment for my colleagues. I, you know, so I like a lot of folks on here like our chair. You know, I've been very involved with my Civic Association, very involved in writing our neighborhood conservation or now neighborhood plan. All that it's a historic program that has had a lot of positive impact on our community. I guess the question I would pose, though, and it doesn't have to be answered tonight, is 80 million is a percentage of the CIP. It's not a ton, but it's 80 million dollars. And we have at least one public speaker and many in the community, many more in the community saying, like, we need resources now. We can't wait 10 years for capital improvements. That's $80 million that we have committed to put into another process where it is, again, a lot of really great community members, but it takes a while. We've just heard from staff that we have money that we have yet to commit, because that process takes a while. The question is, you know, if we're in such tight budget times and we need our government to move faster to provide resources, infrastructure, can we still afford to tie up almost $100 million in a capital plan that is to be decided through many, many, many layers of a process? And I'll point out a process by which many times projects can be vetoed simply by people who live near them, which does not encompass everyone who enjoy the benefit of a new street or community center or school. Is this the best way to run a local government? I think you can see where I'm going with this. I think it's something that we really should reconsider. It's a program that has had a lot of success in Arlington, but is it a program that we should continue to commit so much capital funding to when we have so many other priorities pressing? That's all I have to say.

Question, Len, tell me online.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to lend my voice also for the Lee Community Center. There already has been a certain amount of community process on this. The county had commissioned some options of which the community surrounding it has sort of developed a consensus on what would be good and that it should be done. This is unusual in that we have everybody around that community center wanting it and wanting it to be preserved and to be restored, so we're not going to be getting objections around it. This is a facility that would be serving the entire county, though there are fewer community centers up in North Arlington than elsewhere. Right now it's vacant, and that's partly because the building has deteriorated, not surprisingly. It's been quite a while since it was last renovated. The fear is that over 10 years, the deterioration will continue and our hand might be forced that it's too much to do any further renovations. It's in good enough shape now that it can be restored. So I would urge that we look to continue the community process and do it on a faster basis so that we can actually coalesce around what we want out of this particular building going forward and then start planning the renovations around that and do that in sooner than 10 years. It is part of the Langston Boulevard area plan. It's contemplated to be there to continue. And I think that it's something that we already have the consensus to keep it. So let's see it upon that and try to get that process going to decide what's going to be in it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions, comments? I want to make one comment and follow up to Commissioner Berkey. This goes back many, many, many years to Boston, Virginia Square Civic Association. And I do recall that I think it took something like 12 or 15 years to get sidewalks along Kirkwood Road through the old neighborhood program that we had. And I think funding down or what you think of the program now, a lot of folks just gave up because we were always told submit something, submit a project, but prepare to wait forever. So I don't know how I feel about exactly about maybe reducing that fund. So at any rate, but I do have one other question. This is mostly for the team up here. I was approached by Mason Kushner, who's the clerk to the county board. There is a county board session with chairs of the various commissions on the 9th for any commission that wants to speak strongly one way or another on the CIP. I'm asking this mildly, but is there something that you think that we should, obviously this did not come up last year, because this was not something that was last year, but is there something that you think that the commission should be present to present to Okay, I'm not hearing anything there. And I know this is not really your bailiwick, Mr. Pfeiffer, but do you think, I mean, I'm willing to go speak at anything, but.

I'm not aware that this has been done in the past, but I think that you're certainly within your rights to do that if that's something the commission wishes. Okay, great.

So I haven't heard anything there. So do we have a motion for this? If so, I haven't received. is this informational or is this actionable it's just informational madam chair what we do is i've been taking notes and we will send just a general summation of the discussion to the board but you don't need to thank you motions or or actions excellent okay i appreciate that because i didn't see that in all the prep work okay um well thank you very much staff for specifically for making that a very brief presentation for us but very in depth within that brevity, and we appreciate that. And thank you for taking our questions. Have a good evening. And thank you, Ms. Hensroth, for speaking tonight. Madam Clerk, would you like to call the next agenda item, please?

Yes. Our second item is the Adaptive Reuse Admin Regulations, Standard Site Plan Update Processes. This is an informational item only. and we have our very own Matt Pfeiffer, our Planning Division Site Plan Supervisor to speak on these processes.

All right, while this was coming up, thank you, Madam Clerk, Madam Chair, members of the Planning Commission, I'm Matt Pfeiffer with the Planning Division. So let me get this in, oops.

There we go.

OK, so we thought we would take the opportunity to provide an update to the Commission on two items that the Planning Division is working on at the moment. One is at the end of the process, sort of the end of the road before it goes live, and the other is right at the beginning. So hopefully this is some good information for you. What we're going to talk about briefly is our work on the administrative regulation for adaptive reuse site plan projects. We're going to go over the major concepts and process workflows and kind of how that all ties together, and then I'm going to give a brief introduction to our kickoff for the update to the standard site plan conditions and talk about the scope of work. OK. So first thing is the adaptive reuse. So. Uh, the adaptive reuse policy, as we all know, was adopted back in 2024. The, I think it was December, 2024. Um, and at the time we said that we were going to take a sort of trial by fire approach, uh, and that we were going to review the first couple of projects and see how the process kind of shaped up, uh, like I said, and, and, uh, kind of go as you. as you please type of approach. And then we're going to see what worked, what didn't work, and then craft and adaptive reuse administrative regulation based on that. And so now we've got about five or six projects under our belt. And so we have, you know, at the beginning of this year, we started drafting what that administrative regulation looks like. And so what we have seen through experience is that the ultimate workflow submission standards uh and process for these things really depends on kind of two axes if you can think of a y-axis and an x-axis um and one thing is the development scope and we're we're saying what that is is uh what the scope of the actual proposal is so um and some of the things that we've defined that as are you making changes to the site the landscaping the public realm um And if so, that's what we've defined as more of an enhanced scope. On the other end of the spectrum, if you were simply taking a building and changing the inside of the building with no changes to the outside of the building or the site, then we were saying that that's more of a baseline scope. And on the other side of the axis, we've talked about these as policy trade-offs. And so when we first started reviewing the adaptive reuse applications, we said there are certain things that to the policy which named adaptive reuse as a public priority there are certain things that we will accept as kind of standard uh trade-offs policy trade-offs right so things like you know we may not be getting strict conformance in things like landscaping or tree canopy or other environmental goals streets or streetscape cross sections bike parking things like that on the other side of the spectrum There are more complex policy trade-offs, and a great example is the Crystal City one that we did this spring, where that actually directly impeded the realization of a major public space. And so there are these two kind of axes that work together, and you can kind of think of it almost as a chart, and you can kind of plot where your project falls along that chart. And so we've done that, and this is what it looks like. And so based on that, we kind of we have. We have outlined three different. Very similar but nuanced different review processes for these applications, and so the first one we're calling this a streamlined review process, and so this is when you have a baseline development scope, meaning you're not really making any major changes. You're going in there. You're changing the inside of the building. That's basically it and. there are really no conflicts with any major county policies. You're not impeding the realization of any major policy goals. And so in those types of scenarios, we're saying this is about a 75 day review process. The public process would consist of staff creating a web page, the applicant creating presentations, all of those would be hosted on the web page, sent out to the community for comments, and then we'd go right to planning commission. Now, For the next one, which we're calling an intermediate review process, this is also a 75-day review process. But the difference here is that you may have complex policy tradeoffs. So again, the Crystal City one is a very good example of this type of application. Not necessarily a super complex development scope, but you did have those complex policy tradeoffs. So in this case, The major difference here is that we are saying that you will need to have a lunch and learn meeting. And this is the conversation with the community where you have presentations by staff and the applicant and that discussion with stakeholders. And then the last one, we're calling this a comprehensive review process. This is when you have an enhanced development scope both standard policy trade-offs, but also complex ones. So really the difference here is when you have an enhanced development scope, what you're going to need is more than two review cycles, because we end up with a lot of comments from different interdepartmental review groups, and it usually takes two or more review cycles to resolve all of those. And in this case, you would also need that lunch and learn meeting. Okay. So some of the process touch points, you know, one thing that we're incorporating is an abbreviated preliminary review cycle. And since this has a lot of variables in terms of the review process, in terms of submission requirements, we're gonna use this time to make sure that everything in your application is complete, that you've submitted all the materials you need to, and then we'll have the conversation about, you know, what review process you fall into. For sustainable design, we are not requiring any sustainable design for these projects. However, because in the majority of these cases they are switching out building systems, there is an opportunity to implement sustainable design measures. So what we are asking is that all applications provide a preliminary energy model and an embodied carbon analysis and that all applicants meet with green building staff prior to submitting their application to have that conversation and see, you know, is there any certification that can be achieved? Is there any energy efficient measures that can be incorporated? And then for the public review process, you know, this is pretty similar. We've been through this quite a few times now. We are, for all projects, we are still, you know, recommending that a planning commission liaison be assigned. Uh, that will work with staff to, you know, make sure that all the touch points are done and that, you know, the commission is fully informed by the time this comes to the commission. Um, you know, I mentioned we are still creating web pages for all of these projects, staff, and the applicant are creating presentations that are hosted on the webpage. Um, and for pro for the streamlined projects, we will do the same outreach that we do for minor site plan amendments and use permits. email and phone communication with stakeholders and requests for written feedback. And then for those that fall into either the intermediate or comprehensive review processes, we would do the lunch and learn meeting. So. In terms of the timeline, like I said, we developed the policy over the winter and spring. We are briefing you today. We have already had the conversation with NAOP. The next step is really to send this down. Since this is an official administrative regulation, we will send this down to the county manager's office. Mark will sign this and then we will publish it. I'm hoping to have this go live. Mid July. So. That is it for adaptive reuse and I will pivot quickly into site plan conditions and then we can open it up for questions. So before I talk about the scope, just a little bit of background on site plan conditions and framing just to remind everyone here. So the standard site plan conditions. are not adopted policy. They're not adopted regulations. They are simply a working list of site plan conditions that we use as a starting point for negotiations with applicants on site plans. This is standard language. That language is always shaped and molded and amended to fit individual projects. And that is the language that is actually adopted by the board with individual projects. So the standard site plan condition language is you know we would call it like a an administrative document it's not something that is adopted by the board so that begs the question are we creating new policy with our standard site plan conditions no we are not the purpose here is really to capture any technical administrative updates that have occurred over the last several years which we're doing It's also to align condition language with codes and ordinance updates, which has occurred over the last few years, and then also to implement recently adopted policy. So put that out of the way. So this is these are the scope of things that we're looking to accomplish. And before I get into all of this, I'm not going to read everything on the slide. But before I get into all of this, I will say that This is kind of our working list at the beginning of the process. This is subject to change. We are going to study a lot of this. We may study it and say, we don't want to do that. Or we may come up with things that are not on this list that we end up going with. But this scope of changes falls into two main buckets. One are things that are incremental updates that we've already started doing. with site plan projects in the last, probably, you know, 10 site plan projects have had some of these on there. An example is changes to our language, giving flexibility to our maintenance of transportation condition, which talks about, you know, sidewalk widths. And then parking space centers. So those are things we've already started doing, and this would just formalize those into our standard condition list. And then in terms of studies, There are a number of things that we've collected over the years and that we know that that may need to change and we're going to spend this summer studying it. So some of the highlights here are, you know, we've been doing, the fire department has been doing a lot of enforcement work related to in building wireless. We're going to study doing that. We heard from the Disability Advisory Commission that they want to study reincorporating power door opener requirements. So we're going to study that. The sustainable design. Obviously we had the 2025 green building policy update last year and so we're going to study a number of things related to that. You know, I think you know the easiest one is updating the the the bonus density language to align with the policy. But then there are some other things in that condition that need to update is be updated as well. So again, you know, and then back on just kind of. aligning these conditions with our with recently adopted policies. We just had a change to the zoning ordinance for EV parking, so we need to change our parking condition to align with that. OK, in terms of process, so we are right at the beginning here at the kickoff stage, so we're at the first step here. I am briefing you all tonight. We are kicking this off internally at the same time. We are going to study a lot of these things over the summer with an interdepartmental review group. We are going to draft a document. At the same time, we're also going to be working with NAOP as they are our main customers for this endeavor. Once we have a draft done, we will review and refine that internally, work with the county attorney's office and NAOP again in parallel. In September we're targeting bringing this to a site plan review committee meeting and you all will be there and can comment on by that time we'll have a draft and we'll be able to present what those changes will be and go through it. So that is my last slide and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you Mr. Pfeiffer.

Questions? Commissioner Garcia.

A little wonky. I did actually maybe not so much a question, but just a comment. I you know, I really love that you all are making modifications to the adaptive reuse process. Obviously we wanted to go quickly. I think it's incredibly important that it be expedient, but I really appreciate that you've listened to the communities input and their desire to kind way in where they have experience in their neighborhoods and can really contribute to making I think a better outcome right for some of these developments so I think that's great and then I also really support that EV parking study and and the way you're going to align it with the code that we all just supported thanks Commissioner McFlyer

I'd like to associate myself with Commissioner Garcia's comments. I know you guys have done a lot of work on this and it's a great evolution. I do have a question. I noticed there was a lot of focus on GBIP and sort of how the community may be able to benefit and the losses they're realizing by having these adaptive reuse projects. I didn't see anything mentioned on affordable contributions or affordable housing. I know previously some community members have expressed that that's something that they're losing out on. So can you speak to why that's not addressed?

Sure. Yeah. So for the sustainable design, I want to make clear that this is not a requirement. It's this is yeah, so the so the adaptive reuse. You know the policy guides us to view you know to really weigh the trade off between the public priority of reducing or obsolete office space and you know other adopted plans and policies. The way the zoning ordinance is set up. Adaptive reuse projects do not have to comply with section 15.58 of the zoning ordinance, which is kind of the base affordable housing contribution. So they don't have to do that. For sustainable design, again, we're not saying that they have to do any sustainable design elements for this project. And we're viewing kind of the conversion in and of itself as a carbon capture, right? And so that kind of in and of itself complies with our policies. The reason we called this out specifically is that there's an opportunity, right? And so it's have the conversation with staff and a lot of times the developer is doing things that, you know, are already implementing some sustainable design practices so they can have that conversation with staff and staff can guide them in a direction, but they always have the ability to say no. In terms of affordable housing, again, if an applicant came to us and said, we are doing this adaptive reuse and we want to do affordable housing, we would say, great. That's fantastic. You are proposing to do that. We will condition you to do that. But again, it's not a requirement. The reason we called out sustainable design specifically, again, is just because there's more of that technical conversation.

OK, thank you. No, I understand. And I know that you're not having the requirement. Actually, something we were discussing here. I suppose my sort of there's been a lot of progress, obviously, but I do think that potentially putting not that you the same way you're not specifying for them to have a sustainability requirement to put that on the table in terms from the affordable housing component, not to say, hey, we're requiring you to do it, but this is certainly an option. I think could potentially improve this. It's just a consideration. I don't know how many developers will willingly raise their hands, but at least the sort of option is laid out there. I know we want, as Commissioner Garcia mentioned, expediency and all this, but there are trade-offs that I think we may be losing by not putting on the table just as a option.

For sure. No, I think that's really good feedback, and I think we can look into, you know, is there a way for applicants to specify, are they proposing any affordable housing in their statement of justification? So, yeah, that's good feedback. Thank you.

Commissioner Strainer.

I have a few, if that's allowed. Go ahead. I'll go quick. So, first off, I'm supportive of the list of studies and changes to the site plans. Particularly, I think we've had conversations about permits and sort of how you can expedite the issuance of those permits. I know some of the, we've emailed about this because I'm, after we approve a site plan, sometimes there's a whole year that goes by before these projects can even get started because of the permits. And I think any way that we can front run and study as many of those options as possible, getting those in the earlier stages, maybe during the initial site plan issuance, or at least closer to the actual issuance of it, rather than letting that time go by, I think is good for us. It moves the county, it gets that revenue in our pockets faster and it gets the developers revenue in their pockets faster as well. So it's just a good business proposal there. I think in terms of questions that I had, I guess it is just one question. I'm a little concerned about the sort of multi-tiered approach when it comes to these adaptive reuse. I'm concerned that if we create three separate tiers of review, it's going to discourage developers from going bigger with some of these initiatives. Like the one we're going to see tonight has a very expansive footprint and they're really building on what the original site plan is. And I think if we make it more difficult, we might run into a problem where they're going to prefer to just do the baseline standard option because it's the quickest when it gets it out the door. Do you have, did you all, I assume, take that into account? And like, do you think the risks of that happening are are reduced to a point where they're not going to deter applicants from doing something like that? I know it's only like 30 days of the review time, but does that extra step in the process, do you feel like that is not going to hurt the creativity with some of these projects that we're seeing?

No, thanks for that comment. We did think of that, yeah. That came up in kind of some of the internal conversations And it also came up with NAOP as well. I think at the end of the day, it is only a 30 day difference and a difference of having a lunch and learn meeting, which all things considered, you know, compared to SPRC is a pretty easy engagement. And I think we were pretty. That's true. Yeah, I think we were pretty comfortable that this is not in and of itself going to dissuade someone from, you know, doing a like a Brookfield style project.

OK, and was NAOP. generally satisfied with that too? They were. Okay. Thank you.

I just have a couple comments. One, it was maybe a year ago when AED was here with the very first one of these and up from the audience comes the Civic Association saying we never knew anything about this, what is going on. There was a lot of debate about that. Staff on all fronts is to be complimented that we have addressed that. that we haven't left any community voices excluded from a process. We've come up with a process that doesn't add time. And in fact, I sat in on the very first one of those Lunch and Learns that we did as a result of that. And everybody who was in on that complimented and was very appreciative of that effort. I do like the fact that you are taking like the really simple ones, maybe don't need all this much. to your concern possibly. I'm still a little concerned about how subjective that might get. You know, like who do we use as the base for this? Us, the community? I mean, that would be my only concern at the end of the day. I want to make sure that we never have that happen again where somebody comes up, especially at this point, this last stop before the county board that we've got like, whoops, what did we do? And because then where did we fail is the ultimate thing. And So in general, because Commissioner Striner touched on this as well, NAEP was supportive of this?

Yes, they're supportive of it. And I would say just to your earlier point, I appreciate that there needs to be some kind of objective criteria. And so that's why we came up with this chart. Not to say that it is, I think we want to strike a balance between having this, what we think is pretty objective criteria, but also saying that it's flexible and that we're going to have that conversation during the preliminary review process and say there could be exceptions right where you come in and it may look complicated on paper but once staff gets a better idea for what's actually proposed maybe it kicks you into something different so it's flexible but it's also i think we did we put some thought into what that objective criteria would be thank you um commissioner amadeo

Thank you for this. I was wondering if there would be any design guidelines that would help streamline the process in terms, I know that we can't make all the requirements, but orientation, you know, sun exposure, and obviously there's the problem with the windows not being able to address, you know, the entire side of the building because of the way the structure is usually done. So if there was a way to help some of, because, you know, some of the projects we see, they seem to

have that problem specifically yeah we don't have any design guidelines but this it does go through a full interdepartmental review and we have our urban design staff and chris kreider reviews these things and and provides comments in the architecture um and so you know it's sort of the same with with um you know just a new site plan proposal right it's architecture is sort of uh We provide comments to them. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. But yeah.

The only reason I'm bringing it up is because the creativity that goes into adaptive reuse is a little more limited. And so it might help to streamline the process if something, a list of considerations could be provided.

No, that's good feedback. And we can bring that back and consider it.

Seeing no other hands, great job, Mr. Pfeiffer, and please pass that along to the staff that has been continuing to evolve this so that we can get these buildings taken care of and the public feeling as though they are still a part of it, thank you.

Madam Clerk, please call our next item.

Item number three on the agenda is pertaining to 601 and 701 and 12th Street. adaptive reuse project will give the applicants and the staff a few moments to set up This item is SPLA26-00004, a phase development site plan amendment. And B is SPLA26-00006 for an adaptive reuse site plan amendment. This is again for 601 and 701 12th Street South. We have our site, I'm sorry, we have our planning staff, project manager Adam Watson,

to discuss this item this evening thank you thank you madam clerk and good evening everyone this is the 601 701 12th street south adaptive reuse project please stand by all right apologies but i have two action items for you this evening uh the first is a phase development site plan amendment and the second is the adaptive reuse site plan to bring this development project forward. So, as I mentioned at the top, this site is at 601 and 701 12th Street South. We are just across the street from the Pentagon City Mall and the Pentagon City Metro Station to the south. This site is bounded by South Hayes Street, 12th Street, and then Fern Street to the east. The site today is comprised with two vacant 12-story office buildings that were constructed in the early 1980s. On your west side or the page left side of the screen is 701 12th Street South, and on the right side is 601 12th Street South. There were final site plans for each of those under the Pentagon City PDSP. This is also known as Pentagon City Block 1C. The zoning is CO2.5 mixed-use development district and the GLUP is high office apartment hotel, noting that we're in the Pentagon City Coordinated Redevelopment District and there are no proposed GLUP or zoning changes with this project. So just two photographs of existing conditions from the ground today to just keep in the back of your mind as we talk about this project this evening. uh there's a lot of uh existing hardscape on this on this site today um it's surrounded by what are private courtyards uh entirely in a large circular driveway fronting off of 12th street south so a lot of hardscape down there today and one of the things that i think is going to be very positive with this project is uh taking removing this which i can tell you is very hot down there taking those pictures and replacing it with some retail fronting on 12th Street and then also increasing the landscaping and crucially also adding public access easements down there to make these spaces truly public. So jump into a little bit of policy guidance here. I will just come back to this, refer back to this as needed. This is the overarching vision and planning principles from the Pentagon City Sector Plan. The Pentagon City Sector Plan is our primary guiding document for this site just to mention briefly there are six key planning principles to keep in mind while evaluating this site that's coordinating at district scale so completing those missing links green ribbon is a big part of that equity places for people places for nature transportation with a focus on providing safe inviting i'd say multimodal transportation choices and then also green development as well Drilling down a little bit further, we know to the top this site is identified as the Brookfield site. That's how it's identified in the sector plan. The sector plan recommends density up to 9 FAR for this site. I would also point out to commissioners a couple of key public realm recommendations that are in the sector plan. Those are if my cursor is appearing slowly. those are under the public realm recommendations there sort of mid slide creation of the green ribbon through the site with a public plaza at the metro existing metro tunnel at the southwest corner totaling at least one half acre and then of course the green ribbon taking you diagonally from the site to get you from the southwest corner to the northeast corner public access along 11th Street South. This is the northern frontage of the site. I would know this is one of the things that will not be able to achieve with this project, because this would be envisioned as a complete street. Of course, there is an existing driveway there to access the garage. It must remain. I would also say that only about half of 11th Street would come with the site anyway. The other half would come from the site to the north, which is not redeveloping at this time. And then lastly, getting a separated bicycle facility along South Fern Street, which the developer will be providing. I also would like to highlight for you our adaptive reuse policy adopted by the board in 2024 in response to the declining commercial office sector in Arlington, generally speaking, and recognizing that chronically vacant office buildings have a negative impact on neighborhoods, whether that's the economics, the property values, the public realm. And so repurposing those vacant office buildings is a public priority. And of course, the policy acknowledges that there are going to be trade offs in this case, trade offs between this adaptive reuse policy and the Pentagon city sector plan. And so I've this this snip here on the side policy guidance V8 that's just talking about how It's urgent and the projects that do not proceed to completion deliver no benefits at all. And so therefore, we have to keep in mind these policy trade-offs as we evaluate these projects. Lastly, it recommends a streamlined review, which this project did go through. We did have a Lunch and Learn meeting on May the 28th, which was well attended and appreciate everybody for attending that meeting and providing feedback. So just briefly on the proposal, because the applicant will spend more time with this section. This site does have a PDSP that was approved for it back in 2024. It was never implemented. That PDSP did not include any final site plans for construction of buildings. That's not feasible. So the applicant is asking to essentially discontinue that what was known as the 12th Street landing PDSP and revise the conditions of the Pentagon City PDSP just to enable this adaptive reuse proposal to move forward. And so then the adaptive reuse component of this again is to convert the existing vacant 12 store office, 12 story office towers to residential construct new ground level retail. That's single story retail. then two-story residential wings one along fern street one along south hayes street that i'll show in a minute new public spaces and a green ribbon pathway again the configuration of these is going to be different than envisioning the sector plan because the two existing buildings need to remain there uh but again i would note that we're beginning public access easements for these spaces which is great and then lastly uh landscape and streetscape improvements as well i will just note that this is really an exemplar of adaptive reuse project we haven't had a project come forward that has had this or any, if memory serves, public realm improvements such as these. So a little bit more detail on this, happy to come back to it as needed, but again, taking about 563,000 square feet of office, transitioning that to residential, up to 607 residential units, just under 30,000 square feet of retail total, just under 15,000 square feet of retail on each building fronting along 12th Street South, and then 3500 square feet of office space to remain in the garage in terms of the below grade parking these are the minimums that we're setting so per our sector plan and per our off-street parking policy recommending a 0.2 space per dwelling unit minimum i do think the applicant has the flexibility to of course park that at a higher ratio if they feel the need i would also just highlight briefly for the very briefly for our point of our conversation that Virginia State code changed recently and we are no longer able to require more than 0.5 parking spaces for a mixed-use development that's within a half mile of a metro station which this is so all is well there 0.2 spaces is what the minimum is again they're allowed to park more than that if they feel the need residential visitor spaces also required 20 space minimum and then retail spaces 120 of those The remainder of the garage is flexible use, essentially parking spaces that we are not counting toward required parking requirement. There's an Avis vehicular rental operation that has an approved use permit by the county board that the applicant intends to continue to operate there for the time being. While those use permits are still valid, 100 spaces in the garage will be allocated to those as well. I won't spend too much time on this because I believe the applicant uh we'll be speaking to this slide in particular the proposed proposed ground floor plan but just again highlighting the that retail in the red fronting along 12th street uh your green ribbon taking you from the southwest corner again you're going to have to jog around the buildings not a not an unobstructed line of sight not a direct connection to the to the northeast corner given the existing buildings to remain but nevertheless achieving the overall intent right of giving us that uh biophilic uh connection Cumulative public spaces, rather than having it be a .5 acres down at the southwest corner, it's more than that. It's .72 acres in terms of total public plaza area. This is not including like pathway easement for sidewalks and things like that. So again, exceeding that target, just in a different configuration. And then lastly, noting the separated bike lane that's provided as recommended in the sector plan on South Fern Street. So I want to just briefly jump into some analysis. This is, I apologize, this is a very busy slide, but essentially the top three rows here, we're talking about policy trade-offs between adaptive reuse and the sector plan. And the text in blue is just showing you where some of those trade-offs exist. So just briefly to walk through those, again, density up to 9 FAR is permitted here. applicant is proposing approximately three far that's about the absolute maximum you could do under adaptive reuse given the restrictions and the zoning orders for adaptive reuse so again it's consistent with the sector plan it's just significantly lower given the fact that we're going to have existing buildings that are remaining creation of the green ribbon i think i covered this on the previous slide again there's a little bit of a different configuration of the public spaces and the green ribbon given the fact that those existing buildings are going to stay uh 11th Street South. Again, we're going to have pedestrian access and a public access easement along that northern edge. It can't be a complete street because the garage entrance needs to stay there and remain. And then the bottom four items I think are critical to highlight also because this is where there are no trade-offs and we're actually achieving what's in the sector plan. So that's the separated bike facility, building coverage below those maximums, tree and vegetative coverage is actually above the recommendation so 20% minimum tree canopy we're at 23.5% for just trees and then in terms of total vegetation you're almost at 50% so that's significantly above the 25% target and then again these new building edges are really framing the streets creating a much more urban feeling situation versus the sort of towers in the park design that exists today One other point to mention is, of course, the office vacancy rate. This is a critical part of our adaptive reuse policy. We do anticipate a shift here, a significant shift within Pentagon City. I'm reading from the bottom row. We do expect a 14.3 percentage point reduction in Pentagon City, 2.7 in the Richmond Highway corridor, so that's Crystal City and Pentagon City combined, and then Arlington Countywide, a 1 percentage point reduction. So overall, we think that this is a great project. It complies with general land use plan, with our zoning ordinance, with the adaptive reuse policy. It's, of course, generally consistent with the recommendations of the sector plan as well, given those constraints of keeping the existing buildings. It advances a number of critical goals and objectives. I've sort of taken a list here of the things that they're doing and paired those with our planning principles from the Pentagon City Sector Plan. So reducing office vacancy, expanding the housing supply, again, vacant buildings right now, creating new truly public plazas, creating the green ribbon pathway, implementing new multimodal infrastructure, exceeding our tree canopy and vegetation targets, new retail to activate the streets, and then obviously improved streetscape and urban design as well. And so this is here for reference if we need to come back to it, but the county managers are recommending adoption of both these items. And this concludes my item. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Watson. And now we will hear from the applicant.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the Planning Commission. I'm Ken Weier with the law firm Weier Gill. With me this evening is my client, Jeff Sell. My client, Andy Crane, is going to bring up a short presentation. I will take away the punchline first. We are in complete agreement with staff, and I want to express my gratitude for Mr. Schreiner for the lunch and learn. The community was involved very early on. Jeff had lunch with Ben from the CPPC, I think in week five or six of the project. We met with the Rural Highlands also. So Let's see if it comes up on the screen. Mr. Watson, would you mind playing IT tech for us? Absolutely. So, Jeff, please.

Yeah, I don't need the screen, so I will just start and kick this off. I'm Jeff Zell from Zell Partners. I am the CEO and chairman of the firm, and we're doing this project with Lincoln Equities Group. Joel Bernstein is on the video, and he's joining us from New York tonight. We're very proud to be here again. I've been in Crystal City doing most of Crystal City with Bob Smith over the years. I represented the family office in our own investments, which are over 14 buildings over there, including Crystal Houses. And it's kind of nice to come back and do a great project here. We look forward to providing you with a very high quality transitional building here. that I think will really set the corner. It's a very, I would say, high-end building. We are removing the facade, as we'll explain, so you're going to get none of the issues with the windows that were described earlier. Architectonic is doing it, which has offices in Miami and also New York City, but they also have an office here in Northern Virginia. So we're very pleased to have them on board. We think it's a great system, great building. We think we've given you a lot of park area. We try and listen. I will tell you, this has been the greatest collaboration between your staff and our company and all our different consultants that we bring with us. to provide you with what I think will be really a state-of-the-art transition of office to residential. So thank you for giving us the chance and opportunity, and I don't think we'll let you down.

Thank you, Jeff. Next slide. So, Madam Chair, if I could give a little bit of the color, so the developer looks at the project, maybe give a little deeper explanation of how we got to where we are. As Mr. Watson showed on that beauty shot of slide four, it's pretty inhospitable today. It's a bunch of concrete, 1980s buildings sitting around a sea of concrete. Next slide. Jeff early on said, well, what can we do with the structure and the bones of this project? The good news is the core and thickness of this building is really an ideal conversion. When you get out of the hallway and you open the door into the unit, it's just about the right depth for a residential unit. So that made it structurally a very attractive project for both Zell and Lincoln Equities. However, we still have the problem of the buildings or towers sitting in the middle of concrete. So early on, Jeff and his team said, well, we need some residential coupled with retail. You're seeing two approximately 15,000 square foot retail bays. And early on, our thought was to break up the open space. Instead of having a half acre park just on one side on Hayes, can we do two quarter acre parks on both sides? That gives us a nice interaction. It doesn't make a sort of primary and secondary. They're both equally proud buildings with strong amenities. And as you can see from the green here, while the entire site is covered with an 800 unit space underground garage, Working with Oculus, we were able to couple the vision that the county has for the green ribbon with as much greenery and porosity as you can see through the site. And I believe the next slide shows some of the public access easements through the site. What we're trying to convey here is there's two types of open spaces that many of you know. But for the community, the blue is you can go there whenever you want. That is a public access easement at the two parks on the eastern and western side, as well as a large central plaza in the middle of what was the green ribbon. I'm going to say it still is a green ribbon. It just zigs and sets of zags. And then finally, the darker cover, maybe orange color, is the orange space that you shouldn't see a distinction between the two, but it gets closer to the building and some of the building amenity spaces clearly within the nooks of the two arms. If you see on Fern and Hayes on the eastern side and right side, the conversion ordinance allows up to two stories of additional square footage to be built on the project. And this achieves a strong county goal, which is to bring the building out to the street face. So you don't have buildings on an island. You actually have doors. on Hay Street on the left hand side, the grade allows those units to walk straight out, which is a great street activation. And while we're not able to do that on Fern Street due to the grade, we are, as Mr. Watson mentioned, able to do the bike lane improvements along the entire frontage to begin sort of building that bicycle network that the county's vision lays out. Next slide. So these are just some of the technical, we can come back to that later, but it shows you basically it's 300, I mean, sorry, 35,000 square feet of proposed public access easements in case there's any questions in the community of us not doing the best we can to get access in through the site and also along the 11th Street at the northern end of the site. It's on a street because our entrances are there, but it does give that public porosity east and west along the northern edge of the property. Let's go to the next slide. These are some of the more very technical elevations, but the best compliment I gave the architect very early on is when I, let's go to the next slide. When I saw the elevations, it doesn't look like, when you look at this, it doesn't look like a conversion. And that's the best credit we can give to our team. We showed it to the community. They understood why the retail is on the south facing out. It enables us to have pool space on top and not compromise the public amenity space up around the building, but gives that strong retail frontage on both the eastern and western corners of the building. And you can see here we are heavily greening the site to the best extent we can, given the garage constraints and the right of ways around the building. Let's go to the next slide. This is an aperture to show how that two-story addition works on both the east and west side of the building. We're not meant to dominate the streetscape, but we are taking advantage of the zoning ordinance flexibility to add up to two stories of additional square footage. And again, that helps them amenitize the project for us. and also differentiate the public versus private open space. So we're consolidating the private open space between that two-story arm and the elbow of the building while focusing the public amenities and the green ribbon through the uninterrupted continuous space from 12th Street up to 11th Street. Next slide. Some of the details. I know this community was very concerned about how do we take this very hostile space and make it warm and inviting. So we worked on some of the elevations here. This is your green ribbon cutting through the center of the site. which shows a mix of heavy green space as well as hardscape to allow people of all abilities to transition the space and also stop periodically for rest. Next slide. This is a detail of the public plaza along Hayes and 12th Street, that corner public plaza. You can see the retail and the lighter color on the right-hand side with the umbrellas. That dining area is not counted as public open space, but it is an area that we all value, certainly when it's not 110 degrees outside. to be able to sit outside and dine and have that interaction between the public and private space being adjacent to one another. Next slide. So we're going to end here, Madam Chair. We are very pleased. I'm very appreciative of Mr. Watson and Mrs. Creed's dialogue. We called them with questions. You've only had four or five of these come in front of you, and there was always technical questions about what slides or what sheets. They were always available. Our team was very responsive, so we're very happy to be in front of you. in a very streamlined and efficient process. And I'll pause there for any questions, but we look forward to your recommendation this evening.

Thank you. I know there were no commissions involved in this, but we were lucky that Commissioner Strinder did represent us at the Lunch and Learn. I know he distributed his report, but would you like to make some comments?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it was covered here in the first two presentations, but the Lunch and Learn It was very fun. Actually, I enjoyed that. It's a nice little casual lunch break activity. But again, a lot of the topics we covered were the green ribbon and sort of the intent versus the letter of the plans. A lot of pedestrian safety, transportation elements, especially one related to the metro entrance, which is supported by the current plan. And then one thing that I don't think will warrant discussion up here But I think it's worth mentioning is that during our conversation we had brought up the idea of potentially having a senior living facility come in that was entertained during the meeting, that lunch and learn that we had at the time. But since then, if I'm remembering and understanding correctly, that is no longer on the table. The applicant is not pursuing that and is not relevant to this site.

at this stage. Correct. We are not pursuing that at this time, but there's a lot of interest out there. So we're on this track until some of the news breaks. So we appreciate it.

So for this conversation, it's not really on the, not on the table for now. And you can come back for an amendment later, but for this purpose of the balance of this conversation, it's not relevant.

Thank you. Before I move forward, Madam Clerk, we didn't have any public speakers, correct? We do.

We do.

I'm sorry. Once again, I have overstepped How do we ever get along without her? So, Madam Clerk, would you please call our public speakers?

Yes. We have two speakers online this evening. We have Ben DiAvanzo and Bernie Byrne, in that order. Mr. DiAvanzo, if you're online, please turn on your mic and your camera, and please notice the three-minute limit on the screen. Okay, we'll come back to him. Mr. Byrne, are you online? Yes?

Yes, I am.

Okay, you can begin. Thank you.

The two buildings lack sufficient biophilia. There are no green roofs, no vines hanging from the roof or ledges or climb from the ground. There are no green walls. The plant palette does not align with the County Board's Monarch Pledge or the County Board's Forestry and Natural Resources Plan. Both encourage planting of native nectar plants to support monarch butterflies and other native pollinators. They do not support planting of cultivars and non-native plants. The palette does not contain any milkweeds, which monarch caterpillars require when feeding. The applicant should add common milkweed to the palette. This is the only parent species that monarchs prefer when laying eggs and that thrives in all its natural areas. As I have informed the applicant, but the applicant has not responded to, the plant palette contains 32 non-native plants. Reports have shown that some are invasive. The applicant should replace all the non-natives with native plants that have similar characteristics such as size, shape, and flower, and leafcutter. It appears the applicant does not intend to do this. The pallet has 34 cultivars that have no more disease resistance than their parents. Cultivars often have reduced nutritional benefits or are toxic to insects. Many have not been well enough studied to identify those that may be harming pollinators. The applicant should replace all with native species that have similar characteristics. Please ensure that the green ribbon conforms to these recommendations. This is one of the first projects that contains a portion of the ribbon. Stop the applicant from setting a very bad precedent for planting within the ribbon before it is too late. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Byrne. And we'll check to see if Mr. Mr. DiAvanzo is online. If you are online, this is your last chance to speak this evening. We will not be coming back to this item. Okay. The matter is closed. The discussion is open to the Planning Commission.

All right. So this matter is now in front of the Commission. Any questions? Comments? Commissioner Rivera.

Dr. Byrne always graces us with his presence and as you know, he's very concerned about the landscaping plan. Can you speak to, he says that you guys haven't replied back or provided about native plantings and the biophilic elements that he touched upon.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So we did submit written responses to staff, which I believe are posted online, and we have agreed to the biophilic narrative that is required by the county staff to speak for themselves was my understanding. We're complying with all county requirements.

And to staff, they are complying with requirements, of course. But I understand we also don't have a sustainability component for we're not going to go down that rabbit hole again. But I Are there elements that are significantly missing from your perspective?

I'm sorry, are we talking about the plan? Just generally speaking? Yeah, for the landscape and providing- No, no, no, they will comply. Because of the extent of public realm improvements for this project, there is a full on final landscape plan condition as there typically is in all standard site plans. And there's also, of course, we have recommended tree planting and species lists that they'll have to go through at the time of final landscape plan review and approval. So it's complying and there will be still further review. And I would just also note, Dr. Barnum may not have had the opportunity to read it yet. The applicant did respond to the question about the pollinators, we forwarded that to Mr. Byrne to take a look and see. And of course, if that doesn't fully satisfy him, we're always available to take further questions about it.

Okay, great. But overall, I'm very happy to see the difference between how it is now and, you know, the renderings of the trees. That was, it makes me really happy to see that. So thank you.

Commissioner Garcia.

Thank you. I had some questions about the green ribbon, and I don't know whether these are going to go to the staff or the applicant. Obviously, you can't cut through the center of an existing building, and I understand that. I would like to understand a bit better whether the proposed path meets those requirements of the green ribbon as far as kind of width and so forth. And then I also would like maybe the applicant and staff to speak to kind of why that retail and then private space is cutting so far towards the edge of the property. It seems as though there would have been an opportunity there to kind of have the green ribbon uh be a little larger and then flow through the the property it seems a bit of an unnatural way and obviously very close to that uh circle drive so if you could speak to that i would i would appreciate it i guess i could start by just answering the policy related stuff about the green ribbon so in terms of the design guidelines and the sector plan yes it is

landscaping on both sides of the path the path width uh is eight to ten feet wide which is correct yeah oh sorry daniel's pointing me to the right slide i should be on here sorry um 23. sorry um the the the long story short is that yes the the path design is complying with the planting zones are both complying with what's in the with in the pentagon city sector plan in terms of having a little bit larger public space down at the southwest corner that was something we heard at the lunch and learn that's something we asked the applicant to consider of course there's a there's a trade-off there between having more retail at that corner versus more usable public space versus breaking that space up across the block again we see what's in the sector plan we make that recommendation to the applicant this being adaptive reuse it's sort of up to them to decide if they want to move forward with that or not so i might let them speak more about the decision to go with the retail and then also about feasibility of of course running the green ribbon through existing buildings yeah so thank you mr austin can we go to our site plan for a second the the prior exhibit you show with the retail juxtaposed with the green ribbon so thank you for the question um commissioner christian that was one of our first questions as a team how do we balance it and

The retail is more than just the retail. So there's a couple of things. First is 15,000 square foot of retail is not token, you know, 5,000 square feet, very narrow. We could have a small grocer here. It has enough weight to give us a broader variety of tenants. Could be one tenant. It's probably one tenant in one and multiple in the other. But we wanted to do on top of that is also important. The open space for the private space sitting on top of it at a southern exposure with the pools and community rooms. So yes, that's private, but the same token, we're exceeding the square footage of the green ribbon. And what we worked through is yes, it's a little narrow, not narrow, it was a pathway as opposed to a park, but in the center of what was a green ribbon, we now have sort of a tertiary or third park. So we thought that was a trade-off that yes, it's a path around the retail, because you frankly don't want to hang out necessarily all the time in front of the retail. And if you do, we have two spots flanking Eastern and Western side. So our operational sort of triage was we have the open space on top of the roof, We have drop-offs in the circular drop-off in the middle with two doors coming out. There's a lot going on there. So we figured you get around the building to get around the retail or go where you're going. And in the middle of the open space, then you have this much larger open space area in the middle of the building as opposed to a green ribbon. So it's maybe a green string, if you will, connecting three different open spaces as opposed to a green ribbon. That was our thesis, if you will, as we started to lay this project out with staff early on.

Okay, so then just a couple follow-ups. So my understanding, and this is to staff, is the green ribbon is really supposed to be kind of multimodal. I am concerned that the way it's just described right now, you end up having, you know, people crossing all around cars, so forth. Is that kind of really meet the intent? And then, you know, I think of the green ribbon and I am very personally invested in the green ribbon because I run and I walk this way very frequently. Right. And I love that the work, obviously, you're all going to do. But, you know, thinking of transit ability and even just the kind of lack of directness of that path, the way it's weaving. I don't know. I think it just there's the potential to, I think, look at that again, I guess I would say. Adam, I don't know if you want to answer my question.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I would say that in terms of the multimodal usability, the pathway is there for that. But I'm also going to introduce to you Daniel Creed from Department of Environmental Services, Transit, excuse me, Development Services inaugural planning commission meeting to let him expand on that further.

Thank you. Thanks, Adam. I'm Daniel Creed with DES. And the green ribbon was always intended to be the multimodal option, the lower stress option through the site. And so we believe that eight feet, it meets the minimum and you can still traverse through there. It was always supposed to be a rather circuitous route and the lower stress route for maybe folks with younger children or people with different abilities than the higher speed, higher volume bicycle traffic would be directed to the South Fern facility that the applicant is proposing.

Awesome, I appreciate that explanation.

Commissioner Lynn, tell me online.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you indulge me, I do have about three questions. The first one is actually for staff and it's about the metro entrance. Clearly it's staying, which is great. Right now it's hours are limited to weekdays 8 to 6 and that of course works for office buildings. this is now going to be residential which means people are going to be coming and going effectively 24 hours seven days a week is there a way we can keep this entrance open the way we have the entrance across the street owned by metro open all the time or whenever i'm not 24 7 of course because metro doesn't run that but open as long as metro is open um that so do you have an answer for that

Yes, Commissioner Lentami, thank you for raising that. We actually have a condition, speaking just to this in particular, your desire for it to be essentially mirroring the operations one hour beyond station operations at Pentagon City Metro Station. I'll just say there is an existing easement here, and that easement is what governs the hours of Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. I'll also say that between Zell and staff, there are other parties to the easement as well. So what we're asking to do is to continue to work with Zell and have them coordinate with the other parties to this easement to try to amend the easement to effectuate that change, to have it be exactly as you said, Commissioner Untellme.

Thank you. Second question for both staff and for the applicant. on the north side where we have the garage entrances, Pentagon City Plan did hope for a street going across there, and I understand why we can't do that. I don't have a concern with that. But if the TSA site north of that redevelops, which everybody hopes it will, would that give opportunity to put a street in or to at least widen the, make it more robust pedestrian path going across from Hayes to Fern.

As Mr. Watson had previously mentioned, the 11th Street extension was envisioned to come in with both the DEA property to the north and this site. So as proposed, it's not going to meet that. It'll be one of the trade-offs we discussed. Whether or not That could happen on its own with just the DEA site. I can't speak to that, but it was envisioned to be both sites together to have the effective width for that extension. But I will mention that the applicant is providing the pedestrian access through there with the public access easement, so you'll still be able to go through the site east to west through that pedestrian easement.

And I would just add, if I could, Commissioner, and tell me, I think, you know, that's still the recommendation of the sector plan. And so if and when the site to the north does come into redevelopment, that would be obviously looked at again to see what could be done there.

OK, great. That's good to know. And finally, I was very much involved with the development of the Pentagon City plan. And Green Ribbon was, of course, one of the signature elements of that overall plan. And of course, we all assumed at the time that this site was going to be totally redeveloped, which is why we had it cutting through. So I was very concerned when I heard that we're doing adaptive reuse, which would immediately negate the ability to do the angle all the way through. I am, after seeing all of this, and thank you, Commissioner Striner, for asking my questions at the lunch and learn, I'm While I'm not thrilled with this, I am nonetheless comfortable with it and support it because it is, I think, the traders are exactly what we expect to do and we have to do here at Planning Commission. Gaining, having at least a true cut through pedestrian, multimodal cut through, low stress I think is the best way to put it, does happen here and that is good. Second, putting the retail, along 12th Street is really important because it gets rid of the towers in the park, along with the residential, both on Fern and Hay Streets. Those really are, I think, very, very much in line with what we wanted with the Pentagon City sector plan. So while we all recognize it's not perfect, the fact that it's adaptive reuse, which is always a win environmentally, I think that the additions you're adding to this, both the retail and the residential, make it something that really is within the spirit of what we were looking for with the Pentagon City Plan. So overall, I will be able to support this based on those things. So I wanted to make that clear. Thank you.

Commissioner Amadeo. yes i'm happy to see that the floor plan the the thickness of the building allows you to do a little bit more than most um existing buildings do however i'm i'm pretty happy with the with the site plan actually i think it is a pretty big improvement compared to what's existing i am still a little concerned about the building themselves i mean the the actual um CLADDING AND I DON'T KNOW I THINK THERE IS JUST ROOM THERE IS CHRIS CRIDER CHIMED IN ON ANY OF THIS YES WE'VE WITH THIS WENT THROUGH A MULTIPLE ROUNDS OF STAFF REVIEW YES I WILL KEEP MY PEACE I ACTUALLY OH GO AHEAD COMMISSIONER GUVAR

I'm sure you guys heard the discussion earlier about requirements. I know there's no sustainability requirement and no requirement for affordable housing, but was that ever a consideration of potentially putting some affordable units, whether on-site or provide to the AHIP fund? This is extra credit bonus. I understand, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and to see perhaps in the future, this is something that could be considered. And if so, how do we have the conversation staff with developers to develop policy that perhaps reflects that?

Sure. Great, great question. So as a former chairman of the board of NAEP, we appreciate the conversation about how do you make the good trade off in today's shifting marketplace? As the chairman said before, there's a structural change. So developers buy and sell land based upon your policies. conversions by their nature are very tricky things to do. So that's why the exemption, I don't want to say the word incentivize, but makes a cleaner pathway to get entitlement. In today's market, when you have the money and the desire and the pathway is clear, that's why this project is a go. So unfortunately, we did not incorporate affordable housing or green building because that wasn't asked of us and that's how we priced the land. But that doesn't mean that in future conversations, more flexibility could be given as a trade-off. As staff mentioned earlier, there's always a trade-off somewhere. But in this site, with all the green building, I'm sorry, with all the green space and the intricacies of the site and the Metro access and the Fern Street, we put all of our extra dollars of our ending a project on the ground plane. But we certainly, I certainly look forward to continuing the conversation on how that dynamic may change.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. And again, I think it's such a huge improvement from where it is, but just want staff to take this back that if perhaps we outline something there, there could be a conversation with other developers in the future.

Thank you. Commissioner Berkey. I will make this brief, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'd like to align myself with Commissioner Guevara's remarks. I think I'm typically one of the commissioners up here who's strongly in support of adaptive reuse. I will support this proposal. I agree with generally all the comments my colleagues have made. I will express some concern about the calibration of the policy as it pertains to this particular site. Maybe it's my disappointment that the previous proposal, Tall Street Landing, is not being built out. I certainly think this proposal fits within the current policy, so I'm obligated to support it tonight. This is really more for staff, but, you know, Given the way the green ribbon is going to be built out here, given the fact that we're not going to get any affordable housing contributions at this particular site, it makes me quite uncomfortable. I'll tell you the truth, and I guess that's part of the trade-off. discussion that we've had, but this one makes me probably the most uncomfortable so far of the adaptive reuse projects. Again, that is not a sufficient basis for me to not support this. I will. It definitely complies with that policy, but I'm just giving my thoughts as you continue to calibrate that policy. I know it's iterative. It's going to evolve. This site in particular, we had a different vision for it than what we're going to have now, and I just think

this is the one that really kind of gives me pause that's where i'm at but i will end up supporting it because again it does comply with their current policy thank you thank you um i have a couple quick things um uh commissioner strainer's report to us indicated that you were considering or would consult with your team regarding bird friendly glass where did that end up i don't remember i'm gonna call my phone a friend if you can go to your next question

So we're still evaluating it. Usually developers, when we get to the final site plan and the costs come in a little bit sharper, we'll be able to make a statement. We can't commit to it now. We're not ruling it out either. We have to look at the totality of the final asks when we get to a billing permit and final site plan release.

Okay, I appreciate that. And although I know some of these things are not required within the context of what we're doing here this evening, but should there be a time where you're starting to see bird strikes, I would strongly recommend there are a lot of Highly less expensive alternatives available, even window stickers. They're not those funny looking crow things. You can consult, and I've given his name out many times, David Howell, who is on our Forestry and Natural Resources Commission. It's a free call. He's got a litany of resources that are available. So I would really hope you're all very proud of your project. You don't want any dead birds hanging around. Question to staff. So getting back to Dr. Byrne. So am I understanding that, and maybe this would come back to Mr. Pfeiffer to also add this down the road. I'm a master gardener. They've trained us, do not use anything invasive. There are things all over the county website, avoid these invasives. So to hear that we've got invasives here is quite troubling to me. I understand that there is, you know, that we're so limited in this and I don't want to hold up a great project for this, but it just seems to me we ought to be able to have native plants. We shouldn't be talking about cultivars that, you know, quantify toxic insects and things like that. And again, there are free resources to the applicant. There are lots of free resources within the commissions, even the master gardeners who can help advise where, you know, common milkweed does not cost that much more than, some ornamental or something that isn't beneficial in the long run. I would also invite you, if you haven't done it yet, go take a walk down in Met Park. And it's amazing, regardless of what time you're out there, you're hearing nice little birds in amidst all this development and things that just makes the whole project that much nicer. This isn't just about This is about housing and getting more people there and improving the current condition and taking out office space that isn't being used. It's also improving the lives. And all those little things add to improvements. And I think residents are happier when they see these types of things. So a county attorney advises us that we can't ask for things that are not parts of things, but he does say that we can shame you. So consider this that I am shaming you to please heavily consider doing something just a little more. It doesn't take a whole lot of money, but please, you've got a project you're proud of. Let's make it totally proud.

So just briefly, there are no invasives. We are using cultivars, if that's how you pronounce it. No invasive species, just to be clear.

You just have to be very careful with cultivars. Dr. Byrne is also a master gardener, so you know, again, consult folks who can perhaps guide you on this. You really, you have a special thing here. Let's make it special all the way.

We agree. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't hear any more comments, questions, concerns. So Commissioner Striner, you have the first of emotions for us, right?

We got a little essay here tonight, but I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the county board adopt the attached phase development site plan amendment ordinance spla 26 0004 site plan number 105 to revise the pentagon city phase development site plan conditions governing parcel 1c south and discontinue the associated quote 12th street landing project design guidelines for the properties located at 601 and 701 12th street south RPCs number 35004-4 and 006 subject to the proposed conditions of the ordinance.

Do we hear a second? Commissioner Guevara seconded. OK, and would you like to comment on your on the motion?

I'll just comment on the project more broadly. I think this is one of the more exciting, more expansive adaptive reuse projects we've seen so far. And I think if any developers are watching at home that are considering an adaptive reuse, I'd use this one as a standard. These guys were great to work with. We did the lunch and learn. We met with them and staff ahead of time. And it was a very smooth process. It was as far as these projects that I've worked on since joining the Commission. This is probably one of the easier ones to work on. A lot fewer issues than I normally run into. So I'm happy to support this. Thank you.

So we will now go to a vote alphabetically. Commissioner Amadeo. Aye. Commissioner Berkey. Aye. Commissioner Garcia.

Aye.

Commissioner Guevara.

Aye.

Commissioner Lantellami-Online. Aye. Commissioner Robertson.

Aye.

Commissioner Streiner.

Aye.

Commissioner Bagley, that's me. I am an I-12345678. Are we in sync? We're in sync. Awesome. Commissioner Striner, your second motion. Get some water.

I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the County Board adopt the Attached Adaptive Reuse Site Plan Amendment Ordinance SPLA 26-00006 to convert two existing office buildings to residential use and construct new retail and residential building additions with up to 607 residential dwelling units up to 29,990 square feet of retail gross floor area and up to 3,579 square foot of office gross floor area with modifications of zoning ordinance requirements including reduced parking requirements altered dimensional parking standards density exclusions and other modifications as necessary To achieve the proposed development plan for 601 and 701, 12th Street South, RPCs number 35-004-004 and 006, subject to all previously approved conditions of the SP-2 and SP-3 of SP number 105 and the conditions of the attached ordinance. Thank you.

Good job reading.

A second. Commissioner Guevara. All right, would you like to speak to your motion? Okay, so let's go to a vote alphabetically. Commissioner Amadeo? Aye. Commissioner Berkey? Aye. Commissioner Garcia?

Aye.

Commissioner Ravaro?

Aye.

Commissioner Lentelmi-Online? Aye. Commissioner Robertson? Aye. Commissioner Streiner?

Aye.

Commissioner Bagley, that's me. I'm an aye, and I believe that will be eight ayes unanimous. Thank you very much. Um, I want to thank the applicant and I can't wait to see when it starts. I'm going to come down and look for that common milkweed though. Um, so thank you very much. And also staff, I know you put a lot of effort in on this and I, you know, we very much appreciate that. And again, commissioner Strinder, thank you for representing us well there. Madam clerk, please call our next item.

Our next item. is SPLA26-00001, a site plan amendment for Site Plan 429 at 1401 Wilson Boulevard and 1400 Key Boulevard. With that, we also have an ordinance to vacate a portion of North Nash Street. In Roslyn, these two items will be spoken by Kevin Lamb, our project manager from Planning Division, And Tina Giapetta will be speaking from DES.

Thank you. We also have Rob Gibson. Mr. Lamb.

All right. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Kevin Lamb with the Planning Division. And tonight I'll be providing a brief presentation on behalf of staff for the 1401 Wilson Boulevard project. So this is a site plan amendment to construct a mixed-use development with two residential towers and ground floor retail. As mentioned, there's also an associated ordinance of vacation to facilitate the development. So the site itself is located in Roslyn and is currently occupied by two vacant office buildings constructed in the 1960s. The existing GLUB designation is High Office Department Hotel and located within the Roslyn Coordinated Redevelopment District. The site also includes a triangle denoting public space and then in terms of the zoning, the existing zoning is CO Roslyn. In terms of the site's entitlement history, so back in June of 2014, the County Board approved a rezoning and site plan to construct an office building, a residential building, and around 55,000 square feet of retail, including a large retail space designed to support a full-service grocery store. The project included a total density of 10.0 FAR and 816 total parking spaces. It also included new public space in the form of the 18th Street Corridor Pedestrian Way and a semi-elevated public plaza known as Oak and Key Plaza, which was located directly above the planned grocery store. So the approved 2014 site plan was extended several times by the County Board, but remains unbuilt. Predating the Roslyn Sector Plan, the approved development plans were essentially incorporated into the overall vision it has for Roslyn. So while the approved project supports the overall policy framework for future growth in Roslyn, certain key project elements such as the substantial office component, the excessive parking supply, as well as the semi-elevated plaza now warrant reconsideration given recent development and market trends. So currently the proposal consists of two 27-story residential towers with 831 units and almost 29,000 square feet of retail GFA. This includes a large 17,000 square foot retail space within the key tower podium. And overall, there is a total net density of 9.94 FAR. So the project includes 602 total parking spaces with the residential parking ratio of .65 spaces per unit. It also includes two separate loading areas at the base of each tower, supporting both the residential and retail uses. The applicant is installing and maintaining new public space, contributing to the 18-3 corridor as envisioned by the sector plan. It will be built to achieve LEED Gold certification And then finally, the applicant is requesting the following zoning ordinance modifications listed here. So adopted in 2015, the Roslyn Sector Plan is the primary policy document guiding future development in Roslyn with a particular focus on the topics of urban design, building height and form, transportation and public space. So these next few slides outline the proposal's general conformance with sector plan guidance in these certain areas. So first up we have ground floor uses. So the proposed land uses are consistent with the plan goals, which generally envisions just a greater balance between residential and commercial uses in order to promote increased activity on nights and on weekends. the proposed ground floor retail shown here in pink within both of the towers supports this street activity and then in terms of service and parking access the sector plan recommends access from both nash street and key boulevard the proposal includes access from nash and oak street instead of key boulevard however staff finds this deviation appropriate since key boulevard is a much higher traffic street, which would introduce greater vehicular pedestrian and bicycle conflicts. So moving on, the building height form and architectural expression of both towers advance the urban design goals of the sector plan for contributing to an attractive built environment while still ensuring appropriate transitions to the neighborhood edge and street level conditions through the use of step backs. The proposed streets and streetscape improvements align with the recommendations of the sector plan as well. So all adjacent sidewalks and streetscapes will be widened to either meet or exceed plan goals. And then all adjacent streets will include bike lanes as well, included protected bike lanes on Wilson, Key and Nash. So the sector plan also identifies the subject site for new public space. including a segment of the 18th Street corridor shown here. So the 18th Street corridor per the sector plan is envisioned as a series of linear public spaces shown in these numbers here, essentially running through the heart of Roslyn. In addition, the sector plan also identifies Oak and Key Park slash Plaza at the subject site shown here, which is essentially mirroring the previous development plans. So the approved 2014 site plan took advantage of the available rooftop area above the planned grocery store, shown here, which the grocery store had its main entry on Key Boulevard instead of where it is today, which is off of the plaza, kind of shown here in this image. So talking about the proposed public space, the applicant has improved upon the previous design consistent with plan goals by prioritizing connection to nature, retail activation, and just overall connectivity, despite the absence of Okinkee Plaza. South African did work closely with staff on redesigns throughout the process based on community staff and SPRC feedback. So rather than an open hardscape plaza as originally designed, by the applicant that the proposal now includes a much more landscape plaza with a lot of biophilic design principles incorporated as you can see here it offer offers more comfortable places to sit is lined with that retail on both sides and all of this is to support pedestrian activity at all times of day so since the large retail space was bumped up to the plasma level to improved critical visibility and access. The area above it is now entirely elevated and has been redesigned as a private amenity with trees, bioretention, and a small dog run for residents. In addition to the construction as well as the long-term maintenance of the on-site public spaces, the applicant is providing a $2 million contribution that will go towards offsite public space improvements in Roslyn, such as the Gateway Park redesign project, as well as the planned boathouse facility. So in addition to these standard site plan features and amenities listed here, the applicant is requesting 5.71 FAR of additional density. To achieve this additional density, which will be through section 7.15.4 of the zoning ordinance, the applicant has agreed to the following commitments listed here which are also also also sorry also identified by the roslin sector plan as appropriate mitigation methods this includes contributions for affordable housing off-site public space and transportation improvements new public utilities as well as that installation and maintenance of the on-site public space So the applicant's proposal does make substantial commitments towards advancing the county's equity objectives in the areas of affordable housing, public space, transportation, sustainable design, as well as providing new retail employment opportunities. So in terms of public engagement, the project was reviewed by the SPRC, which included representatives from various commissions, civic associations, and adjacent condo buildings. So during the SPRC meetings, there was overall support for the proposal, with members finding it is in general conformance with the Ross and sector plan. And then the following commissions and community groups thus far have also provided letters and comments which are attached to the agenda item. And then overall, staff finds the proposal to be consistent with the county's adopted plans and policies, particularly the Rawson Sector Plan in the areas listed here. Just to name a couple that we haven't touched on yet. So the project revitalizes obviously office buildings, advancing the goals of the adaptive reuse policy. And then also they are building it to achieve legal certification energy performance improvement and compliance with the 2020 GBIP, advancing the goals of the community energy plan. So following the online engagement and SPRC meetings earlier this spring, the project will be heard at the following commissions prior to county board. And then I will pass it off to Tina to talk about the ordinance of vacations.

Hi, yes. So as part of this site plan, we have a request to approve four vacations. One is along Nash St. One is at the corner of Nash and Wilson. One is at Oak St. And then there's a very small one on the south side, also of an easement area.

All right, and then to conclude, staff recommends both approval of the site plan amendment as well as the ordinance of vacation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lamb. And now we will hear from the applicant, Mr. Painter.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Andrew Painter with the law firm of Walsh-Toluchi. um before i begin i do want to express my appreciation to staff over the past many months we have worked through i would say probably 127 different issues across these 2.1 acres every detail has been examined thoroughly every detail has been debated it's been refined but i do think and it was going back to some one of kevin's earlier slides what has made this process so unique this time around is that every participant public and private alike, has really approached wanting to leave a real positive imprint on the future of this project. And I say that because while this has certainly been an applicant-driven project, as most are, it's also been shaped in meaningful ways by staff and the public. All of us, whether we know it or not, were handed this piece of clay. This is a rare opportunity to rethink what had previously been approved back in 2014 and This time, the public and staff have helped shape the parks. They've helped shape the streetscapes, the pedestrian experience, the architecture, just the overall idea with the development. And the same is true with SPRC and our discussion with the civic associations and nearby residents. And because of that collaboration, the project that is before you tonight is stronger. It is more thoughtful and ultimately a much better design. If we can go to the next slide. We're joined by, or I'm joined by our entire design team, including Frank Craighill and Tim Helmig with Monday Properties. Many of you all may know that Monday was formed back in the 1950s by the West Reich family. It originally started off as Westfields Realty. The organization grew alongside Roslin in the 1960s and 1970s. It built these two buildings. And Monday has remained focused on Arlington County. And so the future of these two buildings and what goes on in it is very important to them. We can go to the next slide. Not going to spend too much time on this next slide, which is the overall 2.1 acres. I just note that these two buildings have been vacant for the last two years. There is a substantial topographic drop between the southwestern corner of the site and the northeastern corner of the site, which is in page north on this. If we can go to the next slide, and we can actually probably skip over this one. As Mr. Lam mentioned, back in 2014, Monday received approval for a redevelopment proposal to have a twin tower project. One was an office building, one was a residential building with a 44,000 square foot ground floor grocer that fronted on Key Boulevard. Construction of that project has not commenced, primarily due to market conditions and especially the realities in a post-pandemic environment. But we spent a lot of time after carefully studying it, discussions with our design team, and have finally landed on a proposal that's before you tonight that we believe finally realizes the long-standing vision of the Roslyn Sector Plan. So we're very excited about it. Next slide. And of course, what is being proposed today are two 27-story multifamily residential towers. The Wilson Tower is skinnier. We have recaptured that space for additional ground plane open space. The bottom three bullet points on this really sort of talks about our design drivers. preserving the bones of the original site plan, high quality architecture, urban amenities, public realm, upholding the sector plan goals and honoring the prior commitments in terms of environmental and sustainable design principles, but also doing what we can to carry forth the 2014 commitment to a grocer. Next slide. And in order to ensure the viability of a future grocery store and to do everything we can to attract a grocer, we have shifted the grocery store from the previously approved less visible location along Key Boulevard up to the 18th Street corridor, which not only provides direct visibility to Wilson Boulevard, but will anchor the grocery store and center it at the confluence of our key pedestrian and vehicular connection at Oak Street and the 18th Street corridor. And we'll also encourage casual uses and activation of that corridor. Next slide. This is just parking and onsite circulation, which we can talk about next. But in the interest of time, I'd like to go to my last slide and then I'm going to turn it over to Shalom Baranas, who is our project architect. The brainchild of this 18th Street corridor is really that of Parker Rodriguez, Craig McClure and Rachel Rittler here. This proposal improves upon the prior approvals open space elements. Overall, we have approximately 52% open space, which is quite unique for a Roslyn sector plan project. And when you take out our building footprints, it's about 42% open space. Pretty remarkable. With respect to the 18th Street corridor, we spent substantial time working with staff on this. It is a wider plaza area. Its elements reflect a fresh approach to placemaking. It preserves the mid-block crossings at both ends. And it improves upon accessibility around the site for people of all abilities, including preservation of the elevator along North Nash Street. Self-generated programming was an emphasis of this project. We want to have this be something that just naturally anchors the site and naturally attracts people. And I think we've done that here. The monumental staircase, which you can see here, is a far more gracious, winding monumental staircase that is punctuated by generous intermediate landscaped open spaces and places for people to dwell. And I think Mr. Schwartz, who attended the SPRC, mentioned during the second SPRC that this can be a flagship for Central Roslyn, kind of a Grayson Riva that you see down in Crystal City, but one that is punctuated by more green space here in Roslyn. So we're very excited about that. It celebrates the hillside escarpment and I think will be nothing short of spectacular. Next slide. These two slides here, I know I said I was going to be wrapping up. I just wanted to show these. These show we moved from a very angular, rectangular, linear way of having people navigate the site to one that is more interpretive, but yet intuitive. But we show access in and around the site from all corners. Next slide. And then by skinning up the Wilson Tower, we were able to recapture additional open space along North Nash Street, which we have dedicated back to the public realm in terms of things like bioretention facilities, overlooks, planters, and seating areas. So I'm going to pause here. I'm going to turn the rest of the presentation over to Shalom to walk around the site. Shalom.

Thank you, Andrew. We're very fortunate here to have a full city block to work with surrounded by four streets. And because of that, we developed a design strategy which focused on minimizing the footprints of the two towers And of course, that allowed us to maximize the open space on the site. And our design strategy involved very carefully managing the setbacks, the floor-to-floors, and making the towers as compact as possible in order to really improve the public realm. Next, please. By having so much open space on the site, we were able to shift the towers to locations which really allowed for the best use of the site for publicly accessible space. So here, for example, we're at the corner of Wilson and Nash here looking north. You'll see that along Nash Street there, we took one of our towers and developed its primary facade, west facade, so that it's right along the sidewalk on Oak Street. And you'll see shortly that created a very nice continuous line of retail. And that gives the ability to create a very nice open landscape space along Nash Street. And this has parallel walkways for the public. One is up along the building, which takes you at a higher elevation from this corner up to the plaza in the center of the site. And then the other one follows the sidewalk Roughly 40 feet down to the Nash Street, up to the Key Street, Key Boulevard elevation. Next, please. And Andrew and Andrew mentioned the 18th Street corridor. You see this image on the right from the sector plan. On the left, you can see that we placed our plaza, our primary plaza right on axis with that in order to open up our site both to the east and the west.

Next, please.

On the left there we are standing on Nash Street looking West and one of the key things we're able to do here was to actually increase the open space or the space between our two towers from what we had in our original submittal. We are over 60 feet between the two buildings and you can actually see the sky and the horizon as you look West. Next slide please. Looking in the opposite direction. Here we are looking. East, we're standing at Oak Street. We're looking through our plaza and between the two buildings here again, you can see the horizon, you can see the sky. And in the foreground there, we are looking at our plaza, which is lined with retail, both on the north side and the south side. And of course, that is separated by a long green area that has a series of individual seating areas, which are landscape, provide shade, provide seating. and will be accessible to the public. Next, please. In this particular image, we removed the trees. And the reason we did that is so you could see that the retail continues from both Oak and Nash to this elevation facing the plaza. We have the opportunity here to put in a restaurant or cafe. with outdoor seating, which will be undercover under the soffit that you see there, directly adjacent to the landscaped areas. Madam Chair, if we may have just a couple more minutes. How many more slides? I'll move quickly through this. I have five more slides, I think.

Five slides? Okay, quickly.

All right, very quickly. All right, this is the elevation of the grocery store facing the plaza. We have connectivity between the open space. This is a view of the plaza at night. We intend to be able to develop this so it can be used 18, 24 hours a day. Next. And from Nash Street, you can get up to this plaza by going up this beautiful set of stairs designed by our landscape architect with a series of landscape terraces, which I think make the whole journey very exciting. And it's also accessible with an elevator. the north side of the site we gave the grocery store an identity by pulling it out of the ground where it was before and we active activated both elevations with windows and this one i'm trying to see what's under there okay here we are we're at the corner of Wilson and Oak the retail continues around wraps around all the way to Nash and finally you know we developed the two towers to be distinct from each other but clearly related. The materials are different. The colors are different. The detailing is different. And you can see they have a very strong vertical emphasis. Next. And this is the final image we have. And again, I just want to emphasize here that what we've been able to do is create several alternative passageways for the public to get through the site. And we've combined all of that with very rich landscaping. throughout the site. The next slide just addresses sustainability, which I'd be happy to answer questions about. And then we have community benefits also listed after this one.

Adam Chair, thank you very much.

Thank you. I'm going to get it right this time, Madam Clerk. Do we have any public speakers?

Yes, we do. We have Mr. Stuart Stein here in person and we have Mr. Bernie Byrne online. Mr. Stein.

can you make sure the mic is on thank you can you hear me yeah there we go i'm here representing the nearby rafam civic association we support the nrca's concerns for safety and transportation surrounding the buildings pick up and drop off is a huge problem in roslyn Build to the sidewalk and lack of setbacks in the past has contributed to this. A great example of how things can work is the new Hilton building with its portraiture. Large circular driveways and internal drives exist in many older buildings and should help show us the way that this sort of solution has worked in Arlington for many years and we should take advantage of it in future buildings. We want to express our appreciation for a project that fits so well within the planning for its site rather than asking for more. We also appreciate the developer working with the community. I still remember the developer coming to us well before they even submitted their 4.1 for the 2014 site plan. I also want to express our appreciation for at least a .65 parking ratio. It is good to see an important part of the 18th Street corridor being built and to see a project that incorporates a site coverage of less than 50% in Rossland. In my community, we greatly value diversity. If it was in our area, we would certainly support on-site CAFs. We recognize that affordable units is not always the most important element of a project. This was certainly a consideration during realized Roslyn discussions. However, you should remember that nearby units are not necessarily across the street or even a few blocks away, but are instead anywhere along the corridors. I know there is a proposal to provide nearby units that are actually nearby. I hope that if this is done, that it is done if this option is chosen. Lastly, Many people in my community look forward to another grocery store nearby. The project fits well into the Realize Roslyn plan, its goals and vision. It will be a welcome addition to Roslyn and provide much needed additional residential units. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Byrne, if you could turn on your mic and your camera, please.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Neither of the two towers. Neither has a green roof. Green walls. Neither has solar panels. The closet between the two towers has too many. Potential plant power.

Dr. Byrne. It's kind of you're you're breaking up here and there.

OK, I'll try. The potential plant palette.

Yeah, if you can keep closer to your mic, I think we can hear you better.

It's right on. OK, it's right on.

No, not right now. Can you hear me? Yes. Try to keep it really close. OK. Thank you. Perfect.

OK, good. The potential plant palette does not adequately align with the County Board's 2016 Monarch Pledge for the county's before she announced a recency plan. These documents encourage planting- Hey, Dr. Byrne.

Yeah. I don't want to interrupt you again because I always appreciate the fact that you show up for all of these and speak for something that can't speak for itself. However, we can't really understand what you're saying. I don't understand why. I'm on the mic. Yeah, you keep breaking up. Madam Clerk, is there another way, or what should we advise him to do?

It's on my low-key headset, USB headset, so it should be filling up.

Could he take his headphones off and just speak into the computer?

It won't work.

Okay.

I'll see what I can do with this. My low-key headset is on, and everything's red light, so I'm saying it should be doing it.

Mr. Byrne, do you have comments in writing that you'd like us to read for you?

Not yet. Did you hear me on the last one pretty well?

See, you're still breaking up. I'm having a hard time hearing you, and I think most of my commissioners here are also having that same issue.

Did you hear me well the last time?

Do you want to call us and call in instead? Madam Clerk, can you send him the phone number to call in? Thank you. Appreciate everybody's patience on this.

Yeah, I have that 347-973-6905. That's correct. Do we have a scoring update? 3-1, Bill. 3-1. 3-1.

I guess it's better to be here. Okay, thank you.

Nowhere I'd rather be.

Madam Chair, could we move on and maybe I can assist him? Yeah, and then we could back the clock up for him.

I appreciate that. I think we can do that. I think everybody agrees that's a fair thing. Okay, so Commissioner reports, I can see that this hasn't hit transportation yet, so I will not call on Commissioner Lynn. Tell me, so let's go straight to Commissioner Berkey, who... originally had a co-chair, Commissioner Johnson, who was unable to fulfill that role. We will attempt to find another project for her so she can shadow accordingly. So I want to appreciate the fact that you did this yourself. And go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So everybody, so I passed around a copy of the SPRC report. This was a pleasure to chair. It was a very strong application. We had an applicant who really took the time to work with the SPRC and the community members, and that's much appreciated as well as our staff. So thank you. for that. It seems like a while ago we started this SPRC. The walking tour was a little cold. It was a little windy. I made a crack about summer when summer coming and we're not having that issue anymore. So just a couple highlights. This was a very productive, civil, polite, just enjoyable SPRC. I made that joke a few times, but it really was folks came to the table eager to contribute productively and that was appreciated. obviously this is a proposal that provides a lot more residential units than the previous 2014 site plan and i think it's fair to say that that was appreciated by by all if not majority all um it seems to have generally strong support from the neighbors especially for the grocery store which was spoken to um that really you know dovetails nicely with the roslyn sector plan um You know, there is excitement about the 18th Street corridor. We had a lot of discussions about that. This is a challenging site. You know, I know a lot of my colleagues went to at least one of the SPRCs, but even if you haven't, you take a look at these plans. It's a very challenging site, so the applicant has really done a lot here to work with that grade change. You know, I think kind of generally speaking, you know, one of the bigger issues that kind of popped up when we talk about MDIAS here is, you know the open space that was proposed in the 2014 site plan you know that is that has changed here right so the open space looks a lot different i mean the public space looks a lot different um and then there's an emphasis on providing that grocer you know as a public uh amenity right And I think it's fair to say several of the SPRC members were excited about that, that grocer possibly opening up and really livening that public space in a way that I think, frankly, we've seen as a struggle in some of our other site plan projects where we have these great spaces and then they're not really activated. So I think there's some excitement about that. and then of course the transportation improvements and we can talk about pickups and drop-offs you know there was certainly some significant conversation with some folks from some folks in the sbrc the concern about pickup and drop off um and and how maybe some of the elements of this proposal especially but not limited to you know some of the the um the bike improvements might might impact the pickup and drop off i think other other folks including myself see that it's less of a site plan specific issue and more of a general policy concern that the county needs to deal with. So overall, I think it's fair to say there was generally very strong support for this project coming out of the SPRC.

Thank you, Commissioner Berkey. Madam Clerk, have we got Dr. Byrne back by phone?

Yeah, I'm online here. Awesome.

Yeah, and hold on a second. We want to set the clock. for two minutes. So hold on, we'll tell you when you can go. Thank you for working with us on this.

Oh, it's my problem. My end probably. OK, neither of the two towers are biophilic. Neither has a green roof or green walls. Neither has solar panels. The plaza between the towers has too many impervious surfaces and too few plantings of shrubs and perennials. The potential plant palette does not adequately align with the County Board's 2016 monarch pledge or the county's forestry and natural resources plan. These documents encourage plantings of native plants to support monarch butterflies and other pollinators. They do not support pollinators of cultivars of native plants. To its credit, the plant palette contains common milkweed, This is the only plant that monarch butterflies prefer when laying eggs, and it thrives in Arlington's natural areas. As I have informed the applicant, the pallet contains 30 non-native plant species. 22 of these are not native to North America. Eight are native to North America, but are not native to Arlington County and its vicinity. As with the previous projects, reports that we discussed previously, Reports have shown that some are invasive in many areas outside of Arlington and have not yet been locally designated and have been locally designated as such, but are not yet listed on Arlington's own invasive plant list. That has been causing some confusion. The applicant should replace all the non-natives with native plants that have similar characteristics. The pallet has 25 cultivars that have no more disease resistance than their parents. Cultivars often have reduced nutritional benefits or are toxic to insects. Many have been studied to identify those that may be harming pollinators. The applicant should place all of these with native species that have similar characteristics, such as size, shape, or flower leaf color. Thank you, and thank you for approving me to speak again.

Thank you, Dr. Byrne. Thank you for your patience.

Okay.

Alright, so topics that you believe we should discuss tonight.

Sure, I I put 7 on here. And dare folks want to add to it. They they may try. So I I propose land use and density. Then site design and layout, building height, form and architecture. A lot of these dovetail with what we talked about in SPRC. Transportation slash parking and loading. That might be a good place to talk about pickup drop off issues, that sort of thing. Open space in the landscaping, including trees. And then we could talk about the green building concerns. I know Mr. Dr. Byrne just raised some of those and sustainability. And then finally, construction.

Okay, let's go ahead. And community benefits. Thank you. Alrighty, so let's first start with land use and density. Any questions, comments? Commissioner Streiner.

So I know the grocery store is the sort of anchor here, and you all were talking about a restaurant. Do you have a sense of what the other sort of retail uses for the site are going to be, or is that two or three days? Might recognize Tim on this, but go ahead, Tim.

Yeah, so obviously we're hyper-focused on trying to attract an urban grocer for the large box of 17,000 square feet. We've programmed the loading area underneath the key tower to specifically attract a grocer. They have very specific requirements for how large their vehicles and their trucks are. We've worked with staff on turning radius, We've committed to having a dock master 24-7 to avoid any type of conflicts, pedestrian, motorists, and bikes. We really envision, if you really study the pedestrian flow and certainly the traffic flow coming up and down Wilson and Clarendon, we think that retail and have committed to this large scale of retail because we think there's just going to be overwhelming demand for a variety of different types of retail. It could be, you know, finally to introduce a clothing store into Roslyn as opposed to a fast casual. We certainly have programmed, you know, a higher end, let's call it white tablecloth restaurant that fronts right onto the 18th Street corridor. We think it's going to be a perfect place, as Shalom outlined, for all seasons because we will have it covered mostly for the outdoor seating component. We've already designed the appropriate type of duct work so that all the retail space could actually enjoy some level of cooking if need be. But it can be demised into different types of retail space.

sizes so a lot of flexibility but the commitment to retail is strong because we believe the demand has only gotten stronger in roslyn great yeah no thank you and i think the the flexibility is going to be good in the long term because as people come in and come out of the site you'll have that flexibility and i for one i'm interested for the diversity of options down there because it doesn't really exist you said it you said it right a lot of fast casuals down there

Anything else on land use and density? Alright, moving along to site design, design and layout. OK, moving along now to building height, form and architecture.

Commissioner Abadeo looks good. That's high praise.

Transportation, parking, and loading. I'm going to ask this to staff. Mr. Gibson, we have sat through a number of meetings where we've heard about PUDOs. We know this is an issue in not just Roslyn, but in a lot of places. What can we say to Mr. Stein's comments about the concerns about kudos at this location and what a staff view is. Is this the best and why?

OK. I would hate to say that this is the best because I think the problem is much more of a universal problem than a site specific problem. So I think that anywhere we create an active urban environment with retail homes and all these things and and work within the current environment where we have a lot of like Ubers, Lyfts, food deliveries and other things. There's new things competing for our curb space. Historically, we had parking and that was it. And so what we're doing in the site plan process here is trying to maximize the amount of curb space that we can use for a wide range of things from parking to short term pickup and drop off that would cover anything from the Uber lift to the the Uber Eats type things. And so in this project, we've we've done that along Oak and Key Boulevard. We've also ensured that with the protected bike lanes along Key Boulevard and that that parking, that that is less of an impact potentially for the bike traffic and not just the vehicle traffic. But then as a broader question about where is the county heading, the county and the industry are acutely aware of these challenges as they do have pretty significant second order impacts on our streets, our sidewalks and other spaces. And so I think we've heard the community's concerns about maybe looking at more Portico shares. Historically, we have not liked those because of the conflicts with pedestrians, but maybe there's an opportunity to be more refined in that approach. In our higher urban areas, that may not be appropriate, but in cases like the hotel we saw where you've got a really site specific impact, maybe it is very appropriate. I think it is going to become a much more refined and detailed discussion in our site plan process that we'll have more information on, as well as ongoing work between DES and the police department to manage enforcement and operations within the right of way in a safe manner.

So for the standpoint of the neighbors, the obvious thing that they can do is call the non-emergency number and say, this car has been in the 15-minute space for like six days. And I know I'm exaggerating, but for somebody who is waiting for their order or whatever, and it's like, sorry, I can't get anywhere near you, that becomes an issue. And I know that you are working in various spots in the community where this is a larger issue. Roslyn is one of those, Ballston's another one.

But I think that what we really do appreciate is the bids and the community's concerns on this project and others within Roslyn bringing this up and making it acute. And I feel like they have helped shift the discussion from all of our curbspace dedicated to two-hour parking to uses which are much more akin to the needs of the neighborhood. And so I would advocate for you and them to continue to think about their neighborhood and the things that they see and ensure that that is a discussion within the SPRC process and echoed back to staff.

And to the applicant, again, I think I can't remember. I speak at so many of these I don't remember, but... I spoke to educating residents when they're having things delivered, communicating exactly where that is, making sure when stuff comes up on your app that if it's not the right location, that somehow we correct that so that we take a little bit more proactive approach. You're not police officers, but you could do a lot with communicating. Because you want the residents to be happy. You don't want them to be like, gosh, I can't get anything here. Nobody can drop off anything. What am I going to do? So whatever proactive education, communication types of stuff. to try to help on the other side with this, I think would be appropriate.

And Madam Chair, we have talked about that internally as we go through our leasing efforts and stuff. We'll be working on that as we ramp up on those procedures, and Tim can highlight that. I'd also say, too, we have package rooms off of each lobby as well that are going to be very convenient. And then, unlike some site plans, and Mike McCoskey with VICA can highlight this or can correct me if I'm wrong, but along key and in front of the residential lobby along north oak street you know we basically have two the equivalent of two full blocks of area that we are anticipating to be short-term pickup drop-off zones so a substantial number of spaces where most site plans don't have that luxury and and one thing we've talked about internal that will continue to work with the applicant in the in the post-approval periods is we are not requiring the 50 um

retail spaces to be exclusively dedicated for retail so if if at a time they want to open that up for for something like uh you know let's say it is a grocer and there's sort of you know you pick up your groceries from in there and you don't have to go in and out or maybe you can pick up your your uber from a covered area our zoning would permit that within those spaces and and so i think there's a long way to look at um operationalizing some of these things too

Yeah, I would appreciate the ongoing conversations to get really creative with how you could help address that and then hopefully help with Mr. Stein's concerns, which we hear a lot. Thank you. Anyone else for what was this transportation, parking and loading? Commissioner Garcia.

Just one quick clarifying question. So just as you described, so there is the on-site parking for the retail tenant grocer, and then we're talking about there'll be within that some pickup drop-off potentially for groceries. Just to confirm, that's what I understood, yes.

We wouldn't prohibit it, correct?

Yes, and it sounds like it would be appropriate or desirable. Then the other question I had, if I recall correctly, there were provisions for electric vehicles in the parking, am I recalling, and electric ready. This is not for necessarily the grocer, but for the rest of the residents, is correct?

Correct, Commissioner Garcia. We have 5%. We've committed 5% EV chargers day one and then an additional 20% of the spaces as EV ready.

Yeah, thank you so much. I thought that was great when I saw that. Thank you for clarifying.

OK, seeing nothing else on that topic, let's move to open space and landscaping, including trees. Is this where I would talk about Dr. Byrne? This is where I would talk about Dr. Byrne.

Great, let me go for it.

Alright, I'm into shaving tonight. Let's go for it. So one question that I brought up during the SPRC's was while I appreciate the, and I can't wait, as I mentioned, I'm not a big Roslyn visitor because too much concrete for little old me, but knowing that Gateway Park is going to get fixed, I'll come look. And once this is there, I will come look because it looks very attractive to me. And I would like to go to a restaurant that overlooks that. So one of the things that I asked was, could you make absolutely sure that you, um, uh,

maximize as much as possible the pervious versus the impervious since the last meeting has there been any change in that at all yeah craig we're gonna have uh craig our landscape with parker rodriguez so i believe that since the last sprc um meeting we we did enlarge some of the planting areas within the plaza to make them a little bit more intimate in scale but it's uh much consistent with the original design that you saw during the SPRC process.

Okay, yeah, because it was brought up, it wasn't just me, other people did ask for more pervious and less impervious. Also to Dr. Burns' comments, cultivars, I've been schooled by the, you know, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia, cultivars are not really something, and in this process we can talk about it more than in that last process, encourage you as much as possible with native plants and common milkweed please. I mean, you've got an idea where you've really taken into consideration the unique geography and the meeting of the various regions here. You may as well just go that extra little step to make this as absolutely special environmentally as possible. I think you're going to see A lot of people don't understand it, but I invite you to go look at places that they've done this. I was walking on a little section of Connecticut Avenue the other day, and they had just made the median and the little space next to it all native. And there was shade there, and you could see people's, their whole demeanor changed as they were walking through that. So, You have something that you've really worked hard on here. This is a magnificent, I'm really anxious to see when this is built, that area. So let's just, I'm shaming you. Just, you know, let's make it all the way great there. Thank you. Any other comments, questions on open space landscaping? Yes, Commissioner Abadeo.

When I worked in LA, we did a lot of staircases, a lot of, connections, you know, using because they have kind of a hillsides, you know, connection between the public and the private through staircases. So I really appreciate how you guys use the 18th Street corridor to connect both sides of the site. I am not sure I understand what the big boulders are doing.

I just turned it off, sorry. Struggling with technology this evening. So the story of the landscape that we've developed is based on the siting of the site itself, which is on the escarpment or the fall zone between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Piedmont Plateau. So it's very much about the geology of this site. And we're bringing in those rocks to give you the general idea of what actually happens in that site um roslyn is full of bedrock which is part of that fall zone and it's just recalling that memory of of what is here that sounds great are they usable they're gonna the kids will jump on it all of that that's what we envision yes yeah okay that sounds nice i would have to credit staff with putting that idea in our head um introducing the boulders and the rocks and just something other than

straight man-made hardscape.

I think anything that makes staircases interactive and interesting, I mean, that's something that I think is going to make that whole area look, because, of course, the buildings are going to be very tall, but that part will keep the eye, and Rosalind really needs that human scale, and I think you're going to bring that, and I appreciate it.

Green building and sustainability, including stormwater.

Uh, construction.

Uh, community benefits. Commissioner, we've are sorry.

Uh, so staff is the 6,000,008 have contribution. Is that something that you guys requested? Uhm, I know. Uhm, thankfully we have Mr Stewart shine here and he mentioned that the community was interested in having. on-site units or at the very minimum ones that are dedicated for that corridor, given that obviously this is close to public transit, it would just seems like it would be the adequate place to add that. This is something we've harped on in the past. So I'm just curious the decision making process on this.

Yeah. So, you know, every project is different. So we did work with our colleagues in the housing division So staff did recommend the six million cash contribution as it was gave the county the ability to leverage a lot more units elsewhere in the county for longer terms of affordability and potentially even deeper levels of affordability. So, you know, through our analysis, we kind of looked at, you know, based on the numbers, if the contribution was made for on-site units, we would achieve 11 CAFs on-site. But if we were able to leverage it off-site elsewhere, we would be able to leverage approximately 52 units off-site, as well as these units would be, the affordability term would be much longer at around 75 years compared to 30 years on-site. So a lot of that went into the analysis in addition we kind of looked at the numbers of nearby existing affordable units so looking at within a half mile radius there is there is a supply of affordable units so a thousand committed affordable units are located within a half a mile this includes queen's court which is 100 affordable that has 250 units there's also a bunch of mixed income projects throughout Rosslyn. So that also kind of went into the analysis.

Hey, thank you for that. Of course, I will still encourage for there to be more on site. Granted, I understand that there's different considerations, but it's something that I believe very deeply in, particularly since we end up putting all the affordable units and just certain parts of the county and not having access for other folks to actually enjoy what this beautiful project is going to be. So just wanted to resump my speech that I say. So thank you.

Commissioner Garcia.

I had a quick follow-up to that. So when you, you know, you often talk about kind of the number of units you can gain doing off-site versus on-site. One thing I don't often hear discussed is maybe the time frame. So how quickly, if you do the units off-site, are you able to kind of create them versus if you were to do it on-site, right, based on obviously the timeline of development and so forth?

So the contributions go directly into kind of the affordable housing investment fund, which is kind of administered through a NOFA process. So it might be every year, it might be every two years, but a call goes out to projects seeking affordable housing funds from the county directly. So that's kind of how that money is administered. It obviously depends on when those affordable housing projects get constructed, but the idea is to have this kind of pipeline of affordable housing projects using AHIF funds to increase the supply of affordable housing.

And this might be really a follow-up for us. I would be really interested in understanding kind of like as we set these affordable units aside for other locations, yeah, how quickly are we turning them into affordable housing? And would we be doing so quicker if we kept them on site, right? And then then yeah obviously understanding a distribution across the county so maybe it would be useful to get a better understanding of the program and and the benefits and how quickly you yeah garner them and so forth thank you mr berkey not i mean

At the risk of knowing more than I know, I mean, so to address Commissioner Garcia's question, you know, I think it's I think if this project were to get built on the time frame that the applicant proposes to build it, yes, it would be likely that that these was sick. Kevin six units or however many it was would be built before 52 units elsewhere. Like that's likely that being said, we're seeing an awful lot of site plans not following through to construction. Not to say that this one won't, the applicant clearly intends to construct it, but I've been on the Planning Commission long enough to have participated in 12th Street Landing. And I was very excited about that. And of course that has evolved. So I think it's a really, it's an apples to oranges thing. I think also there's a big difference between six units or 11 units and 52 units, right? And I'm assuming that that calculation is either median or an average of recent leveraging formulas as far as county funds compared to you know other funding sources from our affordable housing developers so i would say you know having done this for over 10 years now i very much was a strong proponent of on-site units in every project personally my thinking has evolved on that because we're not at a loss for affordable housing projects seeking funds Um, we certainly have a lot of challenges in Arlington, but we still have really good, uh, partners. And that's been the issue over the last five to seven years is we just don't have enough funding to, to fund all the projects we'd like to. So six, $8 million. Um, when you consider that we've been funding AHIF at about $15 million a year, last several years, it's a lot of money. That's a lot, a lot of money to go towards that program. And there's certainly several projects in the queue that once they could maybe get that funding could secure other funding sources and move forward. So I would say if you're gonna contextualize it, this would actually be a pretty big deal for AHIF in any given year.

Yeah, no, and I don't want to disagree with you, and I obviously believe you. Feel free to disagree. I guess I don't want to discredit your knowledge. I guess I just would like to see the data, and I think it would be beneficial to everyone. It would inform us moving forward. And so I imagine that the county has all this data, and they could produce some sort of a product to share with us or present to us.

Yeah, maybe moving forward, Mr. Pfeiffer, when the SPRC process, when this comes up, a slide or something could be dedicated as staff makes when we're discussing that as staff is making comments so that, you know, we hit it off at the pass there.

Sure, yeah, we can look into that.

Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Strainer.

I just want to say very quickly that every word that came out of Commissioner Berkey's mouth, I agree with wholeheartedly. That's all I want to say.

Every word. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments? If not, I do believe that we are ready for motions.

Commissioner Berkey. All right. Thank you. I have two motions. Okay. First motion. So I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the County Board adopt the attached site plan amendment, which is parentheses SPLA26-0001 parentheses SP 429 to permit the construction of a mixed-use development consisting of two residential towers up to 9.94 FAR, including 887,232 square feet of residential gross floor area and 28,908 square feet of retail gross floor area with modifications for additional density, percentage of compact parking, required residential loading spaces, density exclusions, and other modifications necessary to achieve the proposed development located at 1401 Wilson Boulevard and 1400 Key Boulevard.

Do we have a second? Second. Commissioner Striner, thank you. Would you like to speak to your motion?

Just again, want to, you know, express my appreciation to both the applicant team as well as our staff for really taking a good project and making it great to pursuing a lot of our goals. So I'm very happy to support this.

Thank you. So we're going to proceed to the vote alphabetically. Commissioner Amadeo. Aye. Commissioner Berkey.

the U.S. teams playing affect my decision here. Aye.

Aye. Commissioner Rivera? Aye. Commissioner Lentz-Helmy on line?

Aye.

Commissioner Robertson?

Aye.

Commissioner Streiner?

Aye.

Commissioner Bagley, that's me. I'm on aye. That's eight. That's unanimous. Correct. We're all good with that. Commissioner Berkey, you have another motion.

I do. So I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the County Board find that the proposed vacations of a portion of North Nash Street at its intersection with Wilson Boulevard abutting I believe it's portion lot 13 and lot 14 subdivisions of lots east of A and B colonial heights and portions of existing easements for public street and utilities purposes on lots 1, 10, 11, 12, and 14 and part of lots 6, 8, 9, and 13 subdivision of lots east of A and B colonial heights are substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan or applicable part thereof.

Second. Thank you, Commissioner Striner. Would you like to speak to that motion?

No, Madam Chair.

Okay. And so we will go ahead to the vote alphabetically. Commissioner Amadeo?

Aye.

Commissioner Berkey? Aye. Commissioner Garcia?

Aye.

Commissioner Rivera?

Aye.

Commissioner Lentelmi-Online? Aye. Commissioner Robertson?

Aye.

Commissioner Striner?

Aye.

And me, I'm an aye, so that's eight. Unanimous, are we good, Mr. Feiberg? All right, I do again want to thank staff. I know you put a lot of effort into this, as always, and also the amount of outreach that you do to make sure that the community does feel as though all of their voices are heard, maybe not necessarily everything that they want. But in this project, I found that there was not a whole lot of community ask because what you all brought to the table was well thought out and I appreciate the fact that you also went to the community in advance. I'm a big believer in the SPRC process because over the years I have seen that usually the projects, regardless how good the applicant thinks they are when they bring them in, they always get better with the input that we get. And I know that you get a lot of asks and I am looking forward to seeing this project being completed. So thank you all very much. And we are going to move on to, commission business so the rest of you can go on with your merry lives. And thank you for giving up not watching the game, which we are losing desperately.

It's done.

Oh, it's done and we lost. I'm sorry. Okay, so first I'm going to ask for unanimous consent of the approval of both the June 1st and June 3rd meetings, minutes, meeting minutes. Okay, great. We're done. Yes. Because it wasn't there. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Okay. Any staff updates, Mr. Pfeiffer?

No staff updates.

Thank you. And we have no rosters.

No rosters this month.

Okay, great. LRPC Commissioner Peterson is not here this evening, but I believe we have a meeting on the 15th, which I sent out an email earlier, and I believe that is on the low residential study, which is a very interesting thing.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

And SPRC, I sent out an email earlier this evening, and I do believe that Commissioner Amadeo, you are chairing the Kensington site. I am. I'm also reporting on the 18th to the county board. I'm getting to that. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Commissioner Striner, are we good for a meeting on the 14th?

Yes. Okay.

And the topic?

The topic are going to be changes, zoning changes that have been brought about by the Code of Virginia changing. So we're just making conforming edits. So it's a very lively discussion. Excellent.

I assume nothing for form-based code. We got nothing for PFRC either. I just want to give you a heads up. Watch your email. maybe in the next week or so from me. By August 1st, I need to submit the commission's legislative priorities and I need to speak to Mr. Fusarelli first. We have three that we can do. So I will do a draft and then I will send it out to everybody and whoever responds, then I'll edit it accordingly. I have to get it to the board, I think, by August 1st. So just want to make you aware of that. And last but not least, unless anyone else has anything else, I want to thank Commissioner Amadeo for representing us at the county board. I haven't done it yet. Yes, I may. And yes, and I will work with you before that. Thank you. Some of our newbies get a little nervous about that. And I also want to thank Commissioner Lantelmi for the marathon. You know, the hours continue to just add on. He left. And I fell asleep on the couch and I was like, oh my God, that meeting is still on. And here's Commissioner Lentelli. It ended at 12.04 a.m. on a Tuesday night, the recess meeting. And he stayed for the whole thing. I mean, he didn't do that one virtually. He stayed. So kudos to you, Commissioner Lentelli. So does anyone else have anything else? I do want to thank staff for keeping us on track tonight, even though I screwed up a couple of times. And again, I also want to thank...

matt de ferranti for showing up and and thanking all this commissioner strainer so we have the transportation update okay transportation plan we are we are nearing the end of it which is kind of wild it's been a while but um on july 13th okay the final draft plan will be released and i'm going to be asking for feedback we need to provide feedback back to the uh group by the 17th of september Oh, that gives us plenty of time. Plenty of time. So the idea is to not interfere with our audience.

And I assume there's something in there about putos.

Yes. Thankfully. It's like 120 pages, so it's a long one. I'm contemplating ways how we can kind of divvy up how we're going to do it. So I'll expect an email from me and just kind of how we can provide feedback on that in a way that's respectful of all our time.

Thank you again, everyone. Tonight, we jammed up the agenda. So we didn't have to meet Wednesday. And also in September, I believe now we will hear the 4420 Fairfax, which is the Spire at Fairmont. And we will also hear what is that the Air and Space Force on those two SBRCs we'll hear in September. More to follow on anything else and if we need more than one meeting there. But so thank you all tonight very much for sacrificing the game and everything else to be here. And enjoy your Wednesday night off now. Thank you.