Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. The June 23rd, 2026 Loudoun County Planning Commission public hearing will now come to order. As is our custom, let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Members of the public who wish to comment on any item on the public hearing legislative agenda may do so. If you are in the boardroom, please fill out a speaker slip and hand it to the Assistant Deputy Clerk of the Planning Commission at the end of the dais to my left. If you are participating electronically, please call the number at the bottom of the screen. Indicate your name and the agenda item you wish to address. Each speaker, whether speaking on behalf of an organization or as an individual, will have three minutes to speak. Written comments may be submitted to the Assistant Deputy Clerk who will make copies for the Planning Commission. The Commission may vote on applications tonight and send its recommendation to the Board of Supervisors or may forward the item to a work session for further consideration before taking a final vote. Our procedure for tonight's public hearing is as follows. 10-minute staff presentation followed by commissioner's questions to staff. Commissioners will be given three minutes to ask questions of staff. 10-minute applicant presentation and commissioners will be given three minutes to ask questions of the applicant. The hearing is then open for public comment, three minutes per speaker. After everyone has had a chance to speak, the hearing is closed. The applicant and staff will have an opportunity to provide any responses to public comment. Finally, there will be a motion, deliberation, and vote by the Commission. The maker of the motion will have three minutes for opening and closing remarks. Commissioners will be given three minutes to speak on the motion. All right, next up, we do have the minutes from the May 26th, 2026 public hearing. If the commissioners have had a chance to review them, I'll accept a motion.

I make a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting. Second.

All right, so a motion to approve made by Vice Chair Moderelli, seconded by Commissioner Banks. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will carry 9-0. Next item is disclosures. I will start to my right, and if you have any disclosures, please turn on your light. Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On Friday the 19th, I met with the applicant teams for the Foxgate mixed-use application, the Village at Clear Springs Land Bay 2C, and the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On June 5th, I met with applicant team from the Dallas Landing application that we have in front of us today. On June 10th, I met with the South Riding Intergenerational Community, the applicant team. On June 11th, I met with the applicant team for the Foxgate mixed use community. On June 17th, I met with Dallas Landing, South applicant team again. June 17th, I also met with Molly Novotny for the, no, this is the 18th, I'm mixing up mine. On June 17th, I met with the owner of Intergenerational South Community. On June 18th, I met with Mike Romeo for the Foxgate applicant. on June 18th. I met with Dominion Energy on the panel wiring application that's in front of us today. On June 18th, I also met with the applicant team for the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. Thank you. Commissioner Miller?

Thank you. On June 11th, I met with the applicant team for Foxgate. On June 12th, I met with the applicant team for Village of Clear Springs for the LIHTC facility. Then on... uh 18 july i met with the applicant team for the loudon school for advanced studies and on the same date met with the applicant team for dulles landing south application that's all thank you mr frank

On June 22nd, I met with the applicant team for the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. Also on the 22nd, I met with the applicant team for the Dulles Landing South application. And also on the 22nd, I met with the applicants for Village at Clear Springs Land Bay 2C.

Commissioner Banks. On June 15th, I met with the applicant team for the Foxgate mixed-use matter. On June 17th, I met with the applicant team for the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. Commissioner Myers.

On June 18th, I met with the applicant team for the Dulles Landing South. On June 19th, I met with the applicant and the representatives for the Foxgate mixed-use. Then also on that same day, I met with the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. I also just real quickly wanted also, today I had the privilege of also, privilege I guess is the wrong word, but anyway, today I attended the funeral services for Steve DeLong and for those of you that have been in Loudoun County for a long time, Steve DeLong, was the creator of Ashburn Farm. And when you want to talk about somebody that really stretched to be a partner in the county, Steve DeLong was literally the head of that. He started the Loudon Schools Partnership, which has grown to over 900 people now supporting schools around Loudon County and helping them. He developed the dinosaur park that's at the end of old Partlow Road, which he didn't have to do. He dedicated many ball fields, he was a coach, he was a supporter of many, but he lost his fight to Parkinson's and he will be sorely missed as a wonderful landmark. If you enjoy Ashburn Farm, just know that that's the man that really created that streetscape for us.

Thank you. Commissioner Jasper.

Sorry, I couldn't open my computer. On the 11th, I met with the applicant team for Dulles South Landing. And on June 19th, I met with the applicant team for the Loudoun School of Advanced Studies.

Okay, and for myself, on May 30th, I attended Loudoun's 2026 Energy and Environment Forum. On June 10th, I met with the Foxgate application team. Also on June 10th, I met with the Dulles Landing South team. June 15th, I had a phone call conversation with Colleen Gillis regarding Dulles Landing South. June 16th, phone conversation with Molly Novotny regarding the Loudon School for Advanced Studies. June 18th, I met with the Dominion team regarding the Loudon Panel Wiring Shop. June 19th, I met with a Sterling resident to discuss Dulles Technology Park application. And June 22nd, phone conversation with Mike Romeo regarding the Village at Clear Springs Land Bay 2C application. All right, our first item on the agenda tonight is LEGI 2025-8, Foxgate Mixed Use, ZMAP 2025-9.

Okay, good evening commissioners. My name is Alison Britton and I am standing in for the project manager Wadaw on this application. This is the Foxgate mixed use application. The property is located south of Route 50, north of East Gate View Drive, east of Tall Cedars Parkway and west of Pleasant Valley Road in the Dulles Election District. It is a 22.68 acre property and it is zoned planned development mixed use business and commercial light industrial. The property is located within the suburban policy area and the suburban mixed use place type. The applicant has proposed a zoning map amendment to rezone the property from the PDMUB and CLI zoning districts to a planned unit development zoning district. This would include 362 multifamily attached units, 40,000 square feet of commercial and retaining what is an existing church today. The applicant has specified unit sizes as listed here for those multifamily units. A little bit of background, the property was rezoned in 2011. It permitted a mixed use development at the time. The proposal is known as Foxgate. It consisted of 110 multifamily attached units with a range of employment commercial and a specific hotel use. For some context here of what we have in the area, the gray shaded area is what was the original Foxgate rezoning. It's kind of hard to see on here. I see that there is a graphic in, I believe, but anyhow. The purple area is an application that is not currently in front of the Planning Commission and not quite ready yet, but it is under staff review called Art in a Dulles. And then the red area is the subject application in front of us tonight, just giving a little context to the area. In general in combination the original Foxgate approved Employment commercial type uses and these two proposals though not both in front of you just one for now Would result in an increase in residential and a significant increase in density in the area. I So here on the screen is the proposed layout. The development consists of four land days and land bay one is the proposed residential area. Land bay two is the community park, which I'll get to in a moment. Land bay three is the existing church area and land bay four is where the area is proposed to be commercial. Site access is proposed via Route 50 and East Gate View Drive. Staff has identified a few outstanding issues that I will go into here in the following slides. Generally the planned unit development zoning districts intended to promote a flexible Land-use approach that is consistent with the underlying place type. It's kind of a create your own zoning district where there are less Development standards prescribed in the zoning ordinance with the intent of kind of creative opportunities to come in through the door but like I said with the intent that they are consistent with the underlying suburban mixed-use place type Generally, there's two points overarching with this application. One is that staff are recommending kind of more cohesion among the different land bays and the different uses in them and that they kind of be functionally tied together among other technical edits. So first here is the mix of uses that are proposed on the right side here. The suburban mixed use anticipates compact pedestrian oriented developments that are kind of integrated with one another. In an ideal world, it'd be kind of vertically integrated with, you'd have like retail on the bottom and commercial, or retail commercial on the bottom and residential on the top kind of a concept. And there are a few incompatible uses that are part of this list. So here I have highlighted in blue are the ones staff would recommend not be part of the application by right and be prohibited out. And then in purple are the ones that staff are recommending be discretionary. So they're the ones to be reviewed on a case by case basis, which may be compatible, but staff would recommend require special exception to be approved in this PUD zoning district. The general plan provides design guidelines intended to promote a sense of place with that walkability, connectivity, specifics relating to the streetscape, building form, orientation, articulation, open space, landscaping, and things like that. Currently, this application lacks full detail for staff to provide a full analysis for compatibility with these things and specifically the commercial land bay, but staff would recommend generally more integration and then more detail. There is an outstanding regulatory issue with the fire apparatus access road that would be required to serve the building highlighted here in red. So staff are recommending a modification to the site design to comply with this. The suburban mixed use place type anticipates about 5% of the area to be for public and civic uses. And for the most part, this application does have that, provides social gathering areas, a few other civic spaces, and then that church site would be a civic site. However, staff are recommending that church site be more incorporated into the development as it is kind of a standalone land bay, which I have a graphic for. There is some technical clarification required for the intent of the future church space. But generally, the general plan anticipates 10% of the site to be developed as open space. And there's the general plan gives that kind of overarching and the zoning ordinance goes kind of a step further by requiring a specific portion of that open space be specifically active recreation space. The proposal does include all of those things. However, a technicality is that the applicant is proposing to dedicate that community park area, that land bay two on the south side, and that would take it out of calculation for the open space. So staff are recommending a reconciliation between those two things. The general plan encourages protection of wildlife habitat. This area has been identified as potential habitat for threatened endangered species. Staff are recommending a commitment that certain studies for acoustical surveys be provided before there's any land disturbing activity on the site, just an order of operations. The general plan and the countywide transportation plan both designate Route 50 as a limited access roadway. The intent is that over time there are less access points, fewer access points on Route 50 that would lead to a significant trip reduction on the site. It's intended to be a through travel way. So that design is intended to enhance safety, public efficiency, and travel speed by reducing conflict points on Route 50. The zoning ordinance also prohibits any new access points along Route 50. So the proposal is to retain the existing access on Route 50, where the church land bay is in purple here, and to remove the two existing access points in blue here that are currently serving single family detached residential and proposing a new access point in orange, which would serve the commercial. Staff have identified that The church access point is not compatible with the current plans and would recommend that the church be accessed by internal roadways off of East Gate View, and also recommend reducing the number of access points along Route 50 as proposed. Staff note that the change in use from residential to commercial would increase the total volume anticipated through this access point. Staff are recommending additional enhanced pedestrian connectivity. Here's that graphic I alluded to earlier where you can see staff are recommending just more integration with the surrounding residential and the commercial to be able to blend with the church land bay in the middle here. And the 2019 general plan anticipates developer contributions for capital facilities costs associated with land development. Staff have identified a deficiency in kind of a standard rate from the capital intensity factor of $1.2 million. And additionally, as mentioned earlier, the open space falls under a deficient level with the dedication of the park space to to the county and staff could support the credit against capital facilities, but for the deficiency in open space. So staff are recommending that this application be forwarded to a future work session to discuss the issues identified here and staff are happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Questions for staff? Mr. Miller. Thank you.

We talk about integrating the church better. How? Have smaller setbacks and build things closer. So how do we integrate an existing building better than what constitutes better? What staff looking for?

I think overall it's the internal connectivity. So the like roadways that would serve from the residential land bay or the commercial land bay through or to include the church site, but also programming specific walkways so that there are easy access points. Right now it's designed so that the surface parking is kind of around the residential building. And so just kind of making that more intentional and more walkable.

So with maybe some stairs to go up the grade between the residential and the church so they can have a more direct walking paths, things like that? Correct. Okay. And then this whole thing about the open space. We want, applicants to give us these parks so that the county can operate them. It's better for us if we operate them than if applicants operate them. So they're gonna take a chunk of their land as open space and leave it as open space, an active rec, and give it to us to run, but then once they do that, we no longer wanna give them credit for actually having given that to us in their open space calculation.

They are kind of different. The open space that the general plan envisions is sort of to keep the site from overall mass lot coverage and also to be programmed to serve the residents that would be existing on the site. The park space would serve the general community. It is different, but for the commission to determine.

So if they did not want to dedicate the park to the county, then there'd be no issue. They just want to keep it and maintain it as an amenity for the commercial, the church and for the residential, then this is no longer an issue. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Alison, on the traffic issues, the... Do we have an anticipated timeline as to when Route 50 will become limited access?

It is designated limited access now.

When it becomes, when it's turned into something that looks a whole lot like Route 7?

I do have DTCI staff available on the line and they may be a better suited to answer your question.

Okay.

Good evening. So currently in this area, Route 50 is already built to its ultimate condition. So we would want these access points removed. So anything east of North Star Boulevard, we would be looking for. limited access along this route because, again, it is built already to its ultimate condition per the CTP. So this is why we were looking for them to will not not have that land before access. We have been working with the applicant to allow the land Bay three access. to remain as long as the church remains in use, but to proffer that they would remove that access point once the church ceases to exist and then connect that Land Bay 3 to that spine road that then connects to East Gateview Drive.

So does the zoning ordinance, I think it was in your slide, prohibit that Route 50 access at Land Bay 4?

Yeah, so it's within the zoning ordinance. It's specifically it's section 7.07.01 that direct access to Route 50 east of North Star Boulevard in any zoning district is prohibited unless the subject property does not have legal access to any road or access easement other than Route 50 and then has legal access to the location of a planned Route 50 parallel road. such as East Gateview Drive. So we would want them because that parcel has access to East Gateview Drive, that Route 50 access should be closed.

Is that something that's modifiable?

I was going to touch on that. It is modifiable, but the policies all also call for closing accesses on Route 50. So an unlikely to be supported modification, but it is something that could be modified. It's not at this time.

Unlikely when you say unlikely to be supported unlikely to be staff supported the modification got you Okay, but it's for the Commission to decide whether that access is is critical for the success of the

That's right. I would add one element to the discussion of this, which is that as part of the original Foxgate approval, once developed, the proffers anticipated that this access point to Land Bay 3 be closed. So it was part of kind of the overall vision if the area had developed as intended at that time. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Mr. Moderator.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Allison, I have two different questions. Maybe you can kind of combine them in answering. I don't know whether I heard it correctly or not. You said these three land base, Land Bay 2, 3, 4, are not integrated well, kind of. they are by their own. I know we talked about the church, I think Commissioner Miller asked you, but what about, I mean, the staff did identify any dependencies between the Land Bay 4 and the Land Bay 2 where the residential and commercial? Does staff have any concern on the one tied to the other one? That's number one, let me join the second one. The second one I heard, I know how important is that access from Route 50 into the commercial land. I understand the applicant, why they need it. But the thing is, where I'm kind of confused is, That can alter the traffic patterns depending on how they build the buildings inside. So without that main piece missing, how did we do the traffic study around that area? Because living in that area, my biggest concern is between this and the other developments that are coming in that area, there are 750 homes in the next couple of years there. That's a lot for that small Eastgate dry. So I just want to make sure that staff did consider all these things and have a clear traffic study done and you have all your questions answered there before we proceed.

Sure, I can take the connectivity piece. Basically, the land before here, staff would say has a lack of detail to know how it's going to function, how people are going to circulate throughout the site is not identified, building layouts, things like that, typical levels of detail. So it's tough to say how that site or that piece of the site would function. But overall, yes, staff are recommending additional connectivity and also additional details to identify better ways to enhance the connectivity. And then to your second point about what the traffic study anticipated, I will leave that to Lori on the line to address.

Yes, the traffic study, they updated their traffic study to look at access from that land bay for as a ride in, ride out. Because again, the zoning ordinance also talks about that they could have that ride in, ride out. But the concern is, again, is that they have the connection to East Gateview Drive. We're still working with their TIS in regards to analyzing the intersections that they evaluated. We do have some outstanding issues on Intersection 6, which is the Pleasant Valley and East Gateview Drive. Um, that needs to be re analyzed. So at this point, I can't say that their traffic impact study has been approved by so that's still an outstanding issue that needs to be addressed and. It's, you know, currently there's not a use on Land Bay 4. The property was bought in 2021 and 2025 by this developer, and there's no use on there for them to have access to it. They can have access to Eastgate View Drive. Their TIS did have turn lanes that were warranted along Eastgate View Drive. So, but again, I... I just want to preface everything by saying we're still working with them on their traffic impact study.

Perfect. Lori, so to summarize, basically, we don't have all the information that we need to have to make a good decision here. Correct. Correct. Correct. Thank you. Commissioner Banks.

I think my question is related to the questions that have been asked by Commissioners Miller and Mod already, but let me go ahead and ask it anyway. In addition to connectivity, are there any other indicia of cohesive functionality that you think should be in this application but are not?

So it's tough to kind of just kind of like itemize pieces of what that could look like because there are so many different directions that connectivity could take. How to integrate a site and how to make it blend and flow smoothly with the other land bays. There's a lot of different ways to potentially do that. So what I can offer maybe is like a range of concepts. I kind of alluded earlier the residential is located kind of central on land bay one with surface parking around it Consciously identifying areas where those residents could walk to the church or even walk to the residential area There's kind of a pathway and a sidewalk along the future internal roadway here that squiggles on the on the bottom but that that could be enhanced, and then just the internal circulations, how people will drive on the site. Those are kind of the main pieces to connectivity that we'd be looking for.

So in other words, you're really looking for the applicant to come up with ways in which all four land-based just sort of flow and work together.

That's right.

Okay.

Okay.

Commissioner Myers.

My first question is in regard to the comment made about fire and safety in the access lane. If that's an FSM requirement, that would be something that would have to be dealt with during the review of this application anyway. It's not something that's really needs to be part of this, is it? I mean, they're gonna have to meet that.

That is true, but it is typical of this type of concern to be raised at this stage for the purpose that it could require significant design changes later down the line that would change what the planning commission and board are looking at and approve. So we try to identify those sooner to avoid that scenario and to have more assurance that it would be a minor. I mean, no matter what, they're gonna have to meet that. That's right.

Whether we deal with it or it's dealt with its site plan, it's going to be dealt with.

That's right.

It's not something that's waivable. Secondarily, The flexibility and creative opportunities, you know, if this was a raw piece that had nothing associated with it, I could see some of the things that you're talking about. But, you know, that church that's there is older than most of us up here on this on this dais. And I know 20 years ago plus I went there for. community means because it was the only community spot down there on Route 15. There was a group known as the Dallas South Business Association. It was people that were just trying to get together once a month and promote businesses down there and what was going on with the CLI and the old RC and stuff. That was the community center where we all met. That particular use and it being a forefront to the community and the way the parking's laid out, to me it's almost like an anchor statement. It's not something that I think we need to go back and redesign. I mean, it's been designed and it's been actually in some cases, I would say not get into religious discussions here. It's been the civic center of that area down there because there was no other places to go other than all the way to Arcola Firehouse in those days. So I think the idea of being creative, you've got to look at what you have to begin with. You've got the church, there's a separation. You've got the residential here and then you've got the commercial over there. and you do have a roadway that connects the three together with a sidewalk. So there is that opportunity, I would say both of conductivity and also design. And then my other thing is just in regards to this vertical planning. I mean, I don't see how you make that. You've only got a limited amount of commercial doing. The church already exists and you've got a four-story and a five-story residential building. I think the last thing we want to do is make that building six stories and seven stories to put commercial on the bottom. So far, I haven't seen any place in Loudoun County where it's worked, even in Loudoun Station, which has a metro center. It's pretty vacant. I think the suburban mixture, what we're talking about, like you see in whether it's the Ashburn communities or other where it's more of a lateral, not a vertical seems to be really what works better in this. I'm wondering where we've come up that it's got to be vertical. What is the vertical you want to see? Do you really want half the commercial to move over to the bottom of the residential buildings?

So generally that is what the suburban mixed-use place type calls for and that kind of design and creating that kind of feels where the where the vertical integration comes from It doesn't have to be vertical There could be integration that is kind of more side-by-side and kind of laid out differently It doesn't it's not always vertical but generally the the mix of uses and blending them together to create that suburban Feel is is the intent and then sorry, what was the second part of that?

Well, I guess my question was like, do you not see this as more of a lateral type of things being done? Because right now it's one property and they've developed three bays. So it's integrated a civic space kind of the church, it's residential, a commercial, and then it's put a residential. And so I think it's better because they're not on top of each other where you've got somebody trying to go in the store and somebody trying to get in their house at the same time. You've got separation of space. So do you give any kind of credence towards the idea that it is a lateral kind of innovation of the suburban? I mean, that's what we saw like in Ashman Village, Ashman Farm. We really weren't into vertical then. We were more into lateral.

Yeah, I would say, like you've identified, there's more than one way to do it. And I would say overall on the site, the residential and commercial is exactly what Suburban Mixed Use is looking for, is those types of uses here. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Jasper?

I'm going to ask for a little bit of a primer on PUDs in Loudoun County. My experience with PUDs is that they tend to be more prescriptive. You want somebody to come in and say this is really what we're gonna do, this is our vision for the site, this is how it's all gonna fit together, this is why they're gonna be complementary uses in these areas, and this is why we deserve relief of some sort from the specific zoning requirements that exists or would otherwise we might apply for. Am I wrong generally in Loudoun? Is it just more general and you say, I'm gonna do PUD but I'm not gonna tell you what's going there.

The zoning ordinance does require like creation of new PUD districts like this to prescribe certain elements of detail, to mirror that that you'd see in any other zoning district. The intent is for sites that are generally sort of smaller in nature, tend to need kind of more flexibility on the regulations. And so that can create a unique opportunity, but also larger scale for things we haven't seen before. So the intent of the PUD is to provide a level of flexibility that a specifically laid out zoning district doesn't implement as well, but there are requirements for the minimum standards and creating your own regulations that are required.

because I just don't see exactly what would be regulated here other than, well, we're going to put a residential building in one land bay, but I mean, it just seems like a regular zoning application to me. I also want to, I just want to It feels to me like this area, there's a ton of residential development coming in relative terms for Loudoun County and that the old ways, everybody always says, you know, oh, this is what works here and nothing else will ever work here because this is just the way it is and we look back and we say this is the way it was. So am I correct that there's a lot of residential development coming in this general area? There is residential coming in this general area. Okay, and... Is there any, from Loudoun's housing program, is there any kind of acknowledgement that having additional development above commercial, having additional vertical development could ultimately assist with the affordable housing shortage in the county?

Is that in the housing policy at all anywhere? I don't know that I have a specific answer for you about that, but if this is sent to a work session, I'm happy to follow up with more information about affordability and vertical integration. Okay, thank you, Elizabeth.

Okay, for myself, I just want to clarify because I thought I heard two different things. The original approved Foxgate application, Alison, I think you said that when the construction of it was to commence, then all access to 50 was going to be terminated, including the church?

That's right.

I thought DTCI said they made accommodations for the entrance for the church to remain open until 50, I guess, became limited access, which maybe I misheard what she said.

Might be a distinction in the trigger. I'll let Lori answer to that.

Yeah, that is correct, because that is an existing use. And again, as a lot of people have pointed out, that church has been there for many, many years. So DTCI worked with the applicant. and met with the owners of the church and talked to them about, we understood that currently that is their only access point. They don't have access from East Gateview Drive. So we had given them the ability to maintain that entrance off of 50 until the church ceases to exist. So when that church shuts down, that access needs to be closed. And then once that, or then the spine road, once the spine road is actually built by the applicant and connects to Eastgate View Drive, it could also be shut down at that time. So there's a proffer that we're working with the applicant on that is, it's a, you know, either this or this, whichever is first in time.

Okay, so that acts as you head east, the other blue point, which goes away, that access is a single family home. And from what I can tell, there's a right turn lane into the church and a right turn lane into that first driveway, but then it disappears. So that where the other entrance is, that's actually on an active travel lane, meaning there is no right turn lane in and out. Is that actually the case?

I'm not sure. I think the turn lane actually continues to that point as well. Because that also is another parcel that had like, I don't know, it almost looks like a storage container on it. Yeah. So, yeah, so I believe the turn lane continues along there. But again, the property, the McDean property that was part of the original Foxgate, all of the access points along 50 have been shut down.

I just was looking at Google Maps just now, and it looked like that turn lane ended before that point. All right. That's all I had on that. And also, I think the approved Foxgate plus the existing or the hotel site that's going to be redeveloped, this project is actually less traffic than what the original approved Foxgate was, correct?

Correct, yes. The original approval had a weekday ADT of 15,951, and this one has a weekday ADT of 5,204. Okay.

All right, thank you. All right, and with that, we'll go to the applicant for presentation.

Good evening, Chair Keers, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Michael Romeo. I'm a land use planner with Walsh Colucci here in Leesburg. For the record, the affidavit for mailing and posting has been submitted. I'm happy to be in front of you this evening on behalf of JLB Realty. Mr. Graham Bach is here representing JLB. We have our team in the audience as well if you have any specific questions about the application. The application is unique in terms of it is proposing something that really hasn't been done in the suburban mixed-use play site in this area yet. If you can see it on the screen here, there's a red outline surrounding the site. The site is in the middle, the teal color in the image there. It's about 22 acres. It is not the full extent of the original Foxgate rezoning, as Allison mentioned, but it does take up a good portion of that area. Within the red boundary is the suburban mixed-use place type. And what exists today effectively is all single-level retail. You have Tall Cedars Shopping Center. You have pad sites along Tall Cedars Parkway. You have the Loudon Crossroads Development who we're effectively partnering with as part of this application. There's no there there for this application or this area yet. This application proposes that as to create a place. We're proposing the community park, we're proposing the residential and commercial, bring it all together from the east and the west. But if you do look at the suburban mixed-use place type in the general plan, and there's passages on the left-hand side that are directly coded from that place type, It identifies the kind of project that we're proposing. It mixes the uses. It has the core use types, residential, multifamily, retail, institutional, and then a conditional use, which is open space, which we are including as part of our development. But when you're thinking of suburban mixed use, this is effectively that. The vertical mixed use was approved as part of the original approval in a very rigid type of approach under the PDMUP district. through a certain percentage requirements for different types of uses. And lo and behold, 15 years later, nothing's been built yet. So here we are. We are proposing an application that makes sense, that conforms to what the place type calls for, and also provides good transitions between uses to the west, the Arts and Adoles application, which Allison mentioned is just to the left of the screen here. That's a larger residential development, which would transition into our residential land bay, Land Bay One, composed of three buildings of five stories. Two of those buildings would be five stories, one would be four stories. In the center is a active recreation courtyard with a pool, bocce ball court. There'd be passive features such as a social terrace, bocce ball court, and other features as well. So really inviting environment for the residents to use. If you go all the way to the right side of the screen, you have the eastern boundary, which exists of Loudoun Crossroads today. It's about a little over 30,000 square feet of commercial within that development. There's a Silver Diner, Popeyes and Wawa there today, and there's three more paths to develop. And adjacent to that would be an extension of that effectively with about 40,000 square feet on our property. And that would transition into the middle of the site, which brings everything together. The church site, is effectively today the entire parcel from Route 50 down East Capeview Drive, but in negotiations with the church, ALB was able to carve off the community park, which is a minimum 40,000 square feet, which will be donated to the county. We want to leave the church as is as much as possible. That's why we're not showing an internal connection from the internal spine road to the church today. You can connect it though from Land Bay 1. We have committed to a pathway from the residential to the Route 50 shared use path, which exists today. and from Land Bay 4, the commercial area to Route 50 shared use path as well. So you can get there from this development. There will be a sidewalk along the internal spine road. And we've agreed to a proffer for Land Bay 4, even though we have no footprint shown yet, they would have internal pedestrian connections throughout that Land Bay. So there's a lot of connectivity on this site that should be accounted for. For Land Bay 1 in the residential area, this is in a picture or a rendering of what a contemporary craftsman style looks like. And this is the style that we've committed to in the design guidelines. The pictures aren't as pretty in the design guidelines, but we do have elevations that show in 2D format what this would look like. But effectively the height of the buildings would be no higher than 60 feet, five feet at its highest point, which is in compliance with the suburban mixed use place type. We have 362 total units in the building. 70% of those units are one bedrooms and two bedrooms. Of that 70%, 68% are 1000 square feet or less. So we're trying to target the smaller unit sizes and make this more affordable for the residents. We would have 10% ADUs as well as 2% universal design units as well. The idea for the design of the site is really to create quality transitions and not overwhelm the existing residential that's there. Staff has commented on the parking around the site, but number one, it allows for it to be a feasible project with surface parking, but it also gives us additional distance between the existing homes and East Gate 1, as well as separation between Arda and Dulles to the west. We are respecting the buffers around the site. We are providing ample parking. We meet the ordinance requirements for parking on the site and for any guests that may be visiting the site. We've worked on the community park in Lambay too, which is just south of the church, direct coordination with park staff. We have identified several features which they have requested and have included in other parks. We've gone through a few iterations of the park so far. The most notable is the fitness court on the far left, blue square there. That's an active feature which they have included in other parks throughout the county. We have the active lawn as well as the playground. The more passive features would be on the southern part of the park. We have five specimen trees, which are the dark green larger circles, which a natural path going through there. We'd have a pavilion for passive space and then a more contemplative pollinator garden But we have heard comments that additional features may be, there may be interest in adding some features and swapping some features out. So we'd like to have a follow up meeting with Commissioner Moderelli, Supervisor Letourneau and park staff to ensure we get the design just right before it comes back to the commission. For the Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church, we have some representatives here that will provide some comments on this evening, but we essentially want to leave it alone. We want to do the best we can to ensure its survivability and ensure that it can expand in the future if it chooses to do so. accomplishing that goal were retaining the Route 50 access to the best extent possible. Ms. Myers was correct that we have drafted a proffer that allows for that access to go away if the church ever goes away, or if the Tall Cedars Parkway Route 50 interchange is implemented and VDOT requires the closure of this accessway. There is a provision in the original proffers that calls for the removal of the Route 50 However, there is a caveat to that, that the County of Vedok can keep it open for whatever reason they choose to do so. So there's a number of different factors. I don't want to oversimplify it, but there is a way for that Route 50 access to remain per the existing proffers on the site. For the commercial land bay, it's obvious that there's really no detail shown for the layout, and we did that on purpose. We have not shown any specific detail because we're trying to find users at this point. The goal for the owner of the commercial land bay is to identify an organic grocer, have them established here, and then have either some inline retail or some pad sites throughout the site. And based on the actual user they find, there's a wide range between I think 10 and 23,000 square feet that that grocer could establish themselves on. So we wanna maintain flexibility, but having discussed this application with commissioners before the public hearing, we believe that we have an option that we can add some additional building footprint options, maybe a half dozen or more, that we can address your concern about what is actually gonna be located there without hurting ourselves by committing to one design. In addition to that, we have already agreed to the design guidelines on the right hand side that are very similar to what was approved on the Loudon Crossroads site adjacent to the site. But I can't stress enough how important the Route 50 entrance is for the commercial land bay. We are consolidating two existing entrances into this one entrance and it is needed to establish the, especially the organic grocer. It would be very difficult to find that user if that is not an option for the access. So just, there was some questions about how customizable is the PUD district. The PUD district is one of the better parts of the new ordinance. It really does give the ability to customize a lot of things. And there were questions about Active Rec and Route 50 access. Those are customizable in chapter seven, which is not a prohibited section or portion of the ordinance from customization. So it does give you that flexibility, unlike previous approvals or zoning district where it was very rigid and you can only do so much within a certain frame. you can customize a lot here. And it may not seem like a unique application, but it is. And there's a lot of subtle things that are not identified in terms of what is being customized that are included in the application. For these gate one HOA, we met with them back in February, had a very good conversation with them. I'll touch on a few points. They asked about crosswalks between their development and our development to the north. We added those crosswalks. They asked about parking along East Gateview Drive. There is existing parallel parking. It was actually part of a road diet. East Gateview Drive used to be a four-lane road through here. The county determined it wasn't necessary. They narrowed it down to two lanes, added bike paths and parallel parking on both sides. We're only going to be modifying the portions of the parallel parking where we need to add turn lanes. Everything else will remain. And then for traffic, they were concerned about traffic. We've consistently updated the traffic study. It's under review by staff on a constant basis. But in terms of comparison, and this was addressed by Lori in her comments, there's 10,000 fewer trips per day that we're producing as a result of our project. The development that was originally approved on the site approved over 1 million square feet of development. We're right around 500,000 square feet. And there's a big reason for that. And a lot of their development was focused on employment uses and retail, less so on residential. We're more focused on residential and on commercial retail. if you can look on the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see minimum percentages for the different types of uses within their original approval, and that's the rigidity of the PD MUB district. They were required to provide those minimums, and that created a situation where the development was effectively unbuildable.

Kim Strome, if you could wrap up your time.

Sure, sure. So effectively, we're trying a different approach, and in conclusion, we look forward to resolving this. There was a number of different issues that were mentioned by staff. We'd love to work with staff or with the commission more on we have a solution I think for more than half or 75% of those and other ones I think we can work on in further detail with the Commission. So thank you for your time, happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you. Questions for the applicant, Commissioner Barnes.

Yes, I have just very little small question. Do you own the property of church?

The church owns the church property. And it's a good question because we did, and this is something Allison mentioned, we crafted the properties in a way where each individual land base responsible for their improvements to avoid putting any responsibilities on the land on the church land because we do not want to put any restrictions on them or burdens on them.

Yeah, the church is independently owned, right?

They're the owner, yes.

They're the owners of it. So how can you control anything to do anything to them?

So GLB has worked out an agreement with the church.

You can't do it anyway. You've got to leave them alone since they've been there forever.

So the current proffers hold them accountable for a lot of different features within the existing development. They're essentially subject to all the proffers.

Because of your development? They have to do something because you're developing around it?

We're trying to make it so the church doesn't have to do anything.

Okay, so church is independent and they have nothing to produce, right?

That's the way we structured the proper agreement.

Thank you.

Mr. Monterey.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mike, I'll try to ask the questions that you could not get a chance to cover. So the fire marshal comment, what's the clarification on that one?

So we've developed an exhibit, which I have my supplemental slides here. This exhibit, you can't see it. It's very hard to see right here, but this addresses that comment. It shows the proper distance between the fire apparatus. Adam Siner is with J2. He can provide more detail on this, but this is effectively what the fire marshal is asking. We get this comment a lot during rezoning applications and Commissioner Myers was correct. It's an issue that has to be resolved at site plan. We're just showing that it meets the requirements through this exhibit. So this will be a resolved issue once we submit this exhibit.

Did you get a chance to talk to the staff before the meeting today?

I did mention this to our project manager who I heard is out ill and I told him we would have it. He said wait to submit until after the public hearing, which is understandable because we wait to submit official responses until after the public hearing. But I did tell him we did create this and we were gonna provide it if needed.

How would the capital intensity, the amount of discrepancy that you guys had?

So I'm glad you asked that as well. We received an updated worksheet from staff. We're gonna be complying with that updated worksheet. So that will be a resolved issue once we resubmit.

Thank you.

Commissioner Myers.

I just want to ask that maybe a little different way. So in regards to the properties and the landowners, is the church in like a partnership with you all as it relates to this rezoning? Because I know you're actually either buying that front piece or something that's part of the property. So they are a party to the application, correct?

That is correct. They are a party. We have contracted on the southern portion for the road and the park with them.

So they have agreed to whatever proffers you've obligated them to through your partnership?

We are not obligating them. The remaining parcel of the church will have no proffer obligations. We're trying to leave them alone and just sort of stay the way they are. We will then buy the southern portion, and we will obligate ourselves to those proffers and tie that to our land bay.

Okay. Thank you.

Anybody else? All right, so I wanna go back to what I mentioned, DTCI and your own exhibit kind of, I think, clarifies it. So where you wanna have the access to Route 50, there's no turn lane in there, correct? You're gonna go directly from a travel lane into and out of this center. Is that what your intent is?

So you were correct when you said it originally, Commissioner Keers, is that the turn lane goes to the church entrance, it goes to the first entrance on Land Bay 4, but it's not designed yet to go to the entrance. What we've done in our constant development plan is show the minimum distance requirement between the church entrance and then the entrance that consolidates the two on Land Bay 4. We haven't shown any exhibits or gone into detail about the Route 50 entrance though.

So is, do I take it? I mean, your intent is for the turn lane to continue to this entrance? It needs to be studied further is what I would say. All right, because to me, this entrance is a non-starter if you don't have a lane to get in and out from the travel lanes there. Also, have you considered, because we've had some other applications and I've heard nothing about the horrors of traffic on East Gate View Drive. And if you build this way, boy, I would think if I lived there and I'm trying to get out, I'm not going to go to the road to the... east and the west, I'm gonna cut through your parking lot to exit onto Route 50. So you can be turning this into a major thruway for the existing community. That's something you've even considered or have any concerns about?

It's, again, probably something that needs to be looked at further. So I would say that. Okay.

And just going back to the original view of this project, which was the integrated beautiful view of, you know, it was very well received and approved when this went through the first time. But after 15 years, the only thing got built was a hotel that never got finished and the County went through years of effort to tear back down. Is that accurate? So I get that. I understand the county's vision of what they want for these small mixed-use developments, like One Loudon kind of has it, but that's a much, much higher density, and to try to recreate that on small individual parcels I think is very difficult to do. But anyways, I'm pontificating and not asking questions, so I will stop.

Anybody else before I go to open the public hearing?

No? All right. So we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing for this item. I have two speakers signed up. First is William Davis followed by Emily Johnson. You can go to either side, either one of the podiums. And you have three minutes and you have a little counter there to count down your time for you.

Okay, thank you. This is my first time here. Welcome. Bear with me. As you mentioned, I'm Bill Davis. I'm the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church, which is your land bay three. To elaborate on what Commissioner Myers said, PVUMC has been there a long time. It was originally built in 1894. The office addition was put into 1945, and the sanctuary and fellowship hall we're using now currently was built in 1991, and we've been providing essential religious and other community support and services for 131 years. We plan to continue to do so for the future. We not only have a congregation which uses the church each week with multiple events, But we also provide facilities for two other church congregations each week, three scouting groups, and several AA groups during each week. These draw from a variety of areas around this location and not just from the immediate areas surrounding the church itself. Our consideration really is parking. We have a number of people who use the area, getting parking for these people in and out during the week is a problem. If in fact there is an access that is taken away from Route 50 and provided into the rest of that site, the propensity is that people are gonna use that for parking since parking is already a problem on East Gate View and also in that area. So our concern really is to have the parking available for the people who use the church and use the church from those other entities that use the church as a facility. So Route 50 is the only access. We would like to have that extend as the continuation of the only access to it for those reasons. Removal of that access would be a major disruption for us and so we therefore ask this access be maintained. Thank you for your opportunity to make our position known.

Thank you. And next, Emily Johnson.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Emily Johnson on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. This corner of South Riding at the intersection of Route 50 and Tall Cedars has been seeing a lot of attention recently and long been viewed as underutilized. To the southwest of this property is a modified proposal for senior living, South Riding intergenerational rezoning. To the west is the proposal to replace the vacant hotel with other multifamily housing at Ortena Dulles. And in the middle of them is this application, which has, in theory, a lot to like. Planned unit developments are exciting, innovative ways of zoning that have the potential to create highly mixed use in walkable areas. We appreciate that the applicant is keeping the existing Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church and working to add compatible uses around it. This is a good place for a PUD application, ideally located to create infill transitions and generate walkable commerce and amenities like a park for nearby residents. However, we expect that applicants who ask for the greater flexibility provided by a PUD are in turn bringing forward thinking design and a cohesive community vision that goes beyond our traditional separation of land uses. Unfortunately, this application is not only missing crucial details, but segregates its land uses in direct contradiction to that principle. It puts all the housing to the west of the church, surrounds it in parking, which does not encourage walkability, and then puts all the commerce to the east of the church and doesn't even have a layout for that area yet, which is shocking considering that PUDs are supposed to provide greater design detail in return for their zoning flexibility. This proposal also seriously lacks pedestrian access internally and in coordination with surrounding developments. For instance, the church remains accessible only via Route 50, making it unreachable by foot for future residents. And there's no planning with the Artena Dulles development. As this area prepares to potentially welcome more families and seniors, ensuring safe connected paths through the community is only going to become more important. We're also somewhat concerned that the applicant appears to be seeking capital facilities credits for dedicating over 50% of their open space as a county park. Why should the applicant receive capital credit for shifting management of their ordinance required open space? We also ask that further work on this part consider how to retain habitat for the endangered bats, turtles, birds, and butterflies that may be on site and agree that there needs to be further acoustical study to determine their presence. Overall, this application needs a lot of work. We'll leave you with staff words who put it clearly when they said, the proposed development does not function cohesively as a PUD. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak to this topic? No, and we had nobody online either, correct? All right, the public hearing is now closed. Does the applicant or staff have any comments made based on what they heard, no? No? All right, this is in the Dulles District, so Commissioner Moderelli, I'll go to you for a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that the Planning Commission forward Leggie 2025-0008, Foxgate mixed use ZMAP 2025-0009 to a Planning Commission work session for further discussion.

Second. Motion made by Commissioner Maduretti to go to a work session, seconded by Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Maduretti, do you have an opening?

I do, Mr. Chair. So again, I think the applicant heard a lot of comments by the commission. as well as, again, Route 50 access, the traffic. Again, I do agree with some of the statements you made and also not agree with some of the statements. I think we've got to figure these things out. For example, even the people who are supporting your application, I heard East Gate View Drive is a problem right now. On the other hand, our traffic study saying that, oh, this is 11,000 cars, less traffic on this road when we build these new homes. I think these are contradictory statements in my mind. If when we are planning to build 700 more homes on the small road with no access onto 50, and also possibility of going to that commercial plaza that you guys are planning to build, So there will be a lot of challenges in terms of the traffic I'm anticipating here. We got to get clarity on this application, especially in terms of traffic, how this is going to go flow onto the East Gate Drive, how many people are going to go to the Pleasant Valley, road towards that road, what will be the impact on the traffic signal there, how many people are going to make to the right towards the Tall Cedars, these are all issues that need to be figured out along with some of the other concerns regarding the cohesion and also integrating well with the church. I know you want to keep it well, isolate the church by itself, but I don't, I don't know, somehow I'm not buying the whole thing because If the church wants to be part of this cohesive development with the three lots across, is it not a good thing that people from this new development go into the new church? I don't know, maybe I'm not getting this whole picture about this, the cohesiveness of this plan. So again, I think hopefully going into work session, I get the clarity as well as other commissioners who have questions on this community, get the clarifications, we can figure out all these issues so that you guys can move forward, thank you.

All right, any other commissioners? Commissioner Barnes.

Yes, sir. I think, in my opinion, this project is nothing but a traffic nightmare. This is too crowded anyway there. There is no roads. And the only one way you get to the 50 and you gotta make one, you can't go left, you gotta go right. And I think the road is not even enough for the people who live there. I see family in there. Last time we had this and the residents come down and said they don't even have enough time for them to get out of here. Sometime it lines up there. So and build this monster on that and you got more problems. I think this is the wrong place. Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy to support the motion to go to work session. I echo a lot of what Commissioner Monterey said with respect to detail. I look forward to seeing the proposed alternatives for the Land Bay 4. and I would like to better understand the traffic flow throughout the PUD district, including, and I know you have numbers on your CDP with respect to parking on land bay one. I think it's all at grade parking. I thought I saw mention of maybe some structured parking, but I don't think you are structured. Maybe it's covered. Did I see some, Anyway, in any event, when it comes back, I'd love to see more about the parking situation there and then how all that traffic's gonna flow through there, especially with respect to what Chair Keers mentioned, the potential thoroughfare opportunity for folks who might be struggling on Eastgate View Drive. The I understand the want to further limit access on Route 50. But I do also see that we need to allow for for whatever whatever product is gonna go in here for it to be successful. I don't want to lard up Route 50 with access points there, but I do think we do have to do something strategically so that we're not choking it off before it even gets out of the ground. And that just ties into the more traffic detail we're gonna need, especially with respect to the proposed alternative envelopes for Land Bay 4. So I look forward to seeing it as it comes back, thanks.

All right, Commissioner Myers.

I want to ask a question of the applicant if that's okay. Yeah, your time. I'm confused because we keep talking about how there's no connection between the three land base. No drivable, no walkable. But I see a road that's going between three parcels that doesn't have a Jersey wall and I see walkways that are about it. So there is conductivity, there is a road that goes through all three postles that enjoys a walkway along that road. Am I missing it or is that true that it's on the plan?

No, it's absolutely on the plan. We have a sheet in this concept development plan which shows all the pedestrian connections and it's not shown on the renderings we have but there are sidewalks on both sides of the internal spine road, which connect all four land bays. There's the Route 50 shared use path, which exists today. We have proffered two connections on land bay one and land bay four that connect the spine road to Route 50 shared use path. So within land bay one, there's multiple connections. Within land bay four, we have a proffer that says we will have multiple connections, even though we show no building footprints today. um and so there are multi there are many connections throughout the project it's a and in the park as well there's many connections so i'm not sure where that comments come from uh we actually also have a sidewalk along east east cave you drive you have three levels of east west connection on this project of what as well as two uh specific north south connections so there is there are many ways to connect through this property i'm not sure where that comment comes from but uh we have the same feeling i appreciate the answer because

read your entire application and the plans that were on it and I'm like either I've read the wrong plan set that was given to me or something's happened in the last since our application came out because to me there's a clear connection both pedestrian wise and driving wise between all three of these parcels. There's no separation that stops. There's nothing that stops a person from living in that apartment to going to that church. There's nothing that stops somebody that's going to your organic grocery store to go to church. There's a walkable and there's a driveway path that never takes them out onto another road. It's internal to the development. So I think there is conductivity there. We keep talking about how it doesn't exist. Secondly, I wanna just, and I'm absolutely gonna support the application going to committee, but I also think, I think about, I think about Ashburn Farm. Ashburn Farm has, this is PUD, it has Ashburn United Methodist Church, then it has a road between it, then it has housing, and then it has the commercial strip where it has the giant, exactly the same layout that I see here. So to say that, again, that there's not a connectivity, I can't imagine that you would put the grocery store beside in the parking lot of the church, Or we would decide the accessory houses go over to the commercial bay. I mean, we have to do some common sense here also when we're planning these out to make them so that they also work. So we have people that can be cohesive when they're living in that environment. So I think it is a lateral, if we want to call it, development of a PUD, not a vertical. We haven't found one that works yet. And I also think we have to remember there's a lot less traffic on the road with this particular development than what we would have had with the approved one. So I look forward to it going to committee and having a discussion on it. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Jasper.

I would like to kind of echo the comments of Commissioner Combs about the design of the surface parking around the residential building. And also, I'd like to hear during the discussion more information about the commercial layout for Land Bay 4, and also some acknowledgement of the comments made concerning the environmental issues, and how the applicant plans to address them.

Okay, thank you. All right, Commissioner Modere, do you have a closing? All right, so we have a motion to go to work session. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will carry 9-0. Thank you very much and we'll be looking forward to working with you later. Our next application, LEGI 2025-69 LCPS View Transition Academy Commission Permit 2025-14.

Good evening. My name is Darby Metcalf with the Department of Planning and Zoning. I'm here tonight to present the application for LCPS View Transition Academy. The subject property is approximately 14.6 acres located south of Route 50 and east of Marwood Drive. The subject property is in the Dole Selection District, transition large lot neighborhood place type and zone transitional residential one under the Loudoun County Zoning Ordinance. The applicant requests a commission permit to permit a public school for up to 500 students. The public school will establish a program for students with disabilities focusing on career and technical education. Present on screen is an annotated excerpt of the Commission Permit Platte. Existing structure on site is indicated in red and proposed expansion of facilities in blue. Renovations of the red facilities are included as well in tonight's application. The application does not propose any development for the smaller portion of the subject parcel west of Marwood Drive indicated by that small yellow box. Tonight's application is the site of the previous Arcola School, which permitted up to 486 students between a child daycare facility and a private school. The general plan policies recommend citing institutional uses such as public schools within existing residential communities as seen to the west and east. Consistent with plan policies of the transition policy area, the applicant proposes greater than the recommended 50% open space up to 63% approximately open space. Staff supports a planning commission recommendation or planning commission approval of the commission permit application and staff are available for questions. Thank you.

All right, thanks, Darby. Questions for staff? Nope, does the applicant have a presentation?

Yes, sir. Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Jefferson Miller. I'm a planner with LCPS. With me this evening is the Assistant Superintendent for Student Services, Ms. Tedra Richardson, and Mr. Blair Shields, our Civil Engineer with Urban. Thank you, Darby.

The VUE Transition Academy is being built on the belief that every student deserves meaningful opportunities to develop independence. Is it on?

It should be.

It's not advancing now. Okay. Career interest gain real-world work experiences and build the competencies necessary for long-term success. Through individualized educational planning, community partnerships, vocational training and authentic workplace experiences, students will be supported in achieving their personal goals while preparing for employment, post-secondary opportunities and independent living. The VUE Transition Academy will support students with disabilities as they prepare for life after high school by providing individualized transition services focused on vocation, employment, and independent living skills. The program will serve students working toward or who have earned an applied studies diploma or extended standard diploma as determined by their individualized educational planning teams. The VUE Transition Academy will support inclusive educational opportunities by bridging the gap between high school and the workforce. Through career and technical education, students develop marketable skills that enhance their employability and support economic independence, while personalized instruction and support foster self-advocacy and the soft skills necessary for successful adult living. The main program focus areas are vocational skills, workplace readiness, and independent living. Our success at the VUE Transition Academy will be measured through strong post-secondary outcomes including employment, future education or supported work opportunities while ensuring meaningful progress towards their transition goals. The Academy will foster strong partnerships that will expand their career exploration, their internships and employment opportunities. We are committed to maintaining a highly trained workforce through ongoing professional learning and specialized training within the transition focused practices. We will look for high levels of student and family satisfaction supported by a continuous feedback loop. At its capacity, we will serve 500 students. We have 15 career pathways. We plan on a multidisciplinary staffing model and multiple partnerships with local businesses and organizations. To support the development of our vision for the VUE Transition Academy, LCPS has hosted a staff listening session, a student listening session, and a listening session with our special education advisory committee. Here's an overview of our 15 pathways. For automotive, we're not looking at a full shop, but we are looking at basic skills like checking air pressure, filling tires, oil changes, car washes and detailing. For skilled trades, we're focusing on carpentry, masonry, drywall and tiling. For horticulture, we're planting plants and growing plants. landscaping and hardscape. We're looking at safety, building patios, lawn care and maintenance. For animal care, we're looking at small animal care such as dogs or smaller animals, grooming and safety. For cosmetology, we're looking at customer service, hair washing, nails, hair styling, cutting and manicure. For health care and wellness, we're looking at basic patient care, CPR and emergency first aid. Culinary and food services, we're looking at basic cooking, baking and food safety, as well as food handling and catering. For hospitality, we're looking at customer service, setup and hosting, hotel skills, laundry, cleanup and setup of AV equipment. Supply chain, we will simulate a warehouse setting by inventory tracking and management. For childcare, we're looking at childcare safety and the ability for our students to successfully work in daycare settings. Safety and security, we're looking at training our students in building safety, checking IDs, utilizing security cameras, walking the perimeter to check buildings for safety. For entrepreneurship, we're looking at a maker space. Our students will be creating projects that will be for sale. And for digital arts and media production, we're looking at a computer lab for graphic design, video and voiceovers.

Thank you, Tedra. Just to orient everyone in terms of where the Transition Academy is supposed to be, it's just south of Route 50 on Marwood Drive, which is at the edge of the Little River and Dulles election districts. The county purchased the property back in February. Area A is planned to be the school site. Area B will be a future county use that has not yet been determined. A public school is a by right use on this property and it's actually used to be the home of Arcola Elementary School. We're surrounded by, uses that have existed for a long time. There's a church to our south, there's residential to our north and west, Route 50 to our east. It's a compatible use with surrounding neighborhood. This is just an outline of the timeline. Currently LCPS is coordinating with county staff to negotiate and execute a lease agreement. These are some renderings of what the school is planned to look like. The coloring may change slightly as we move forward and get a little closer up view. So this is the entrance from the existing bus loop. This is if you're looking at the school from Marwood Drive. We're separating the bus loop and the parent and student drop off. And so that'll make a better and more efficient use of the property in terms of transportation. This is the view from the existing parking lot. This would be the main entrance for students for parent pickup and drop off. Overall, the project is planned to have up to 500 students. Year one, the plan is to hopefully have up to 150 students and build up to the 500. Ultimately, it's planned to be on an A day, B day schedule, which would separate the number of students per day to approximately 250 students per day. The planned opening is in fall of 2028. and your favorable consideration of this project is appreciated. Thank you very much. With that, we'll take any questions. All right, thank you.

Any questions for the applicant on this? Mr. Myers.

Just two quick questions. And they really deal more with not the site so much as the goals of what we're doing here, which is part of the plan amendment, if you ask me. So in order for a person, a young person, and I ask this question because it's personal. For a young person to get into this program is post-graduation, correct?

Yes, for most of our students that will be graduating with an applied studies, that's our postgraduate students. In public education for students with disabilities, we serve students from the ages of 2 to 22.

But my question is, do they have to have an IEP in order to get into this? And the reason why I ask that question is, sometimes it takes a unique parent to survive. get in a full, and I don't mean this to sound disparaging, it takes a unique parent with just so much determination to really get an established IEP for a young person and have it last. If you start in elementary school, it seems impossible to get it through high school and graduation. Again, that's not disparaging, but my question is if someone didn't get through that process and they don't have an IEP, can they still get into this program or are they really kind of, I don't want to use the word locked out, but how in the world would they get that resource to this program then?

That's a great question. We are currently developing the transition center to only serve students with disabilities.

But my question is, do they or do they not have to have an established IEP from Loudoun County in order to get into the program? They must have an IEP. That's unfortunate. I'm just going to say it's very unfortunate. Okay, I'm going to ask another question.

Commissioner Jasper? So my question, one thing that jumped out at me was the notion that there was no community meeting when I read the staff report and I was curious. We have so many things that come up that people say, wow, we didn't know this, the county, we didn't have enough information from the county. And I know that this is still another school use, but what motivated the decision not to have a community meeting?

I would say I refer to this slide. Those are all community meetings. We reached out to all the different user groups that are part of our program and listen to them and how they'd wanna see the program developed.

No, I mean neighbors.

Oh, specifically the residential.

Locationally.

We have not had that meeting.

Okay. That's it, all right. I'll open up the public hearing. I have nobody signed up in advance to speak. Is there anybody in the audience who would like to speak to this application? Oh, nobody online? Nope, all right. Public hearing is now closed. This item is in the Dulles District. I'll go to Vice Chair and Moderator for a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that the Planning Commission approve Leggie 2025-0069, LCPS View Transition Academy, CMPT 2025-0014, subject to the Commission permit plan dated May 7th, 2026, and based on the findings for approval provided as attachments one and two to the June 23rd, 2026 Planning Commission Public Hearing staff report. Second.

Okay, the motion was made by Vice Chairman Maderati. I missed the second. I second. And seconded by Commissioner Barnes. Vice Chairman Maderati, you have an opening.

Yeah, very brief one, really. I mean, I live in the neighborhood. I live in the district. I kind of know this place very well. I know Commissioner Jasper mentioned about not having the community meeting, but this is in kind of a place I don't mind not having one because this school was there for a long time. People know there was a school. I know it was not Arcola Elementary, but I am familiar. It used to be Arcola Elementary at one time, then it became private school, and then became whatever you guys had planned to do here. So I have no problem approving this one for myself, and I would ask other commissioners to approve the same thing. Thank you. Commissioner Jasper.

I'm going to support the motion, but I do so with concern about the county continuing to build facilities without advising the community that facilities are being repurposed or expanded or whatever. It seems like an easy enough thing to advertise a community meeting and say, if you're interested, come here.

Commissioner Barnes?

Yes. I think it's one of the good thing because you can start training kids and they can go and get a job. And that's what we need because a lot of graduates have bachelor's degree sitting home and can't find a job because the subjects they took are no good. So this will give them a job. I think if you had added air conditioning or electrical mechanicals, you know, so it will make it better yet, you know, because those other jobs really open up. But I'll vote for it, thank you.

Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was happy to support the motion. I applaud the use. I think this is a wonderful school use for the county and a great resource for the county. Our purview under commission permit, location, character, and extent, I think this squares nicely for all of our criteria. So I'm happy to support that. One question, there's a small parcel to the, I guess that's southwest corner of the lot. I see on the CDP, I think that's just gonna include some buffering, but is there any planned use for that little node?

Now.

Okay. I would then just in closing to repeat the point that's been made, I think several times now, I think a community meeting with the Marwood folks as this moves forward. Regrettable didn't happen already, but there's still opportunity to do so before you all break ground. So I would support that, but otherwise happy to support the motion. Commissioner Miller.

Thank you. I certainly support the motion. I just want to take the opportunity to comment that when I moved to Loudoun 25 years ago and the population was 170, 180,000 people, we're at 450,000 now. And to paraphrase Ms. Myers, from the Flintstone days when the Earl of Loudoun was probably riding his bike down the side streets with you, county was even smaller and school population was minuscule and there may have been kids that needed these kind of services then but we were just too small of a place to be able to provide that and this is just another indication that we've grown to the plate point where we now have the opportunity to be able to provide some services for some of the kids that we just didn't have enough kids to do in the past 150 if we start in the first year growing to 500 as we figure things out. It's just kind of a remarkable position that we've been able to grow into to be able to provide certain things for certain people because of the size and the breadth and the scope of what we offer as a county and the revenue we generate as a tax base, be able to afford these things and provide these things. So it's just another testament to how Loudoun has grown and something like this in the positive ways over the many years that we've all been here, thank you. Mr. Myers.

Yes, I'll support the application as if I guess it's the old Flintstone as he called me. But I do want to which I realize this isn't a necessary a purview of the plan amendment. But I really would like to just make the public statement that I really hope some soul searching is done that doesn't require a young person to have to have an IEP in order to get through this. I can tell you though, and you know that, sitting on that side of the desk, these are not necessarily easy processes, and just because you finally survived to get a child in it doesn't mean they get to keep it when they go from middle school to high school. You are constantly fighting, and if you don't have the parent that has that kind of dedication, and I'm not faulting parents, but if they don't, that's when the child slips by, and then all of a sudden, and they're probably the ones that need it the most, so we don't create the homelessness that happens here or the kids that are going to Mobile Hope to try to figure out what they can learn to do or echo. So I really think there needs to be some kind of blending of policy that gives a look at these young people as they're graduating to establish a pilot program at least for them that there's a merit that they could meet to also be possibly as you're growing, integrate into that because that's when we all win. That's when we all win. Thank you.

All right, anybody else?

Vice Chair, moderator, do you have a closing?

No.

All right, so we have a motion to approve the application. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will carry, pass 9-0. Thank you very much. All right, up next, LEGI 2025-54, Village at Clear Springs Land Bay 2C, ZCPA 2025-8.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Fayoola Gordon with the Department of Planning and Zoning. I will be presenting the Zoning Concept Amendment Application, Legit 2025-0054, Village at Clare Springs, Land Bay 2C. The subject property is in the Catoctin Election District and is east of Evergreen Mills Road, west of Dulles Greenway, and southwest of the town of Leesburg, located in the transition policy area. The application area is identified as Land Bay 2C and is within LEGI 230017, Village at Clear Springs Development, and is zoned PDH 6, Plan Development Housing. The proposed ZCPA is to amend the previously approved proffers associated with Village at Clear Springs, specifically to, first, remove the affordable housing units from membership in the Master Property Owners Association, second, to reduce parking requirements for affordable housing units, and third, to provide consistency with Virginia Housing Virginia Housing Development Authority funding policies by amending the foreclosure language in the proffer statement. These amendments do not propose changes to the approved housing density, land use mix, or the overall development pattern of the approved application. Just a little bit of background. The village at Clare Springs was approved in 2024 under the revised 1993 zoning ordinance for up to 1,077 dwelling units. Land Bay 2C is approved for up to 54 market-rate single-family attached units and at least 180 affordable housing units. The broader village at Clear Springs Development includes community amenities such as a tennis facility, a community pool, and other recreational and civic uses intended to serve residents throughout the development. Staff finds that the proposed parking modifications are consistent with the current zoning ordinance requirements for the AHU units within the transition policy area. Additionally, the proposed foreclosure language for Virginia housing is consistent with county policies. Staff has identified an outstanding issue associated with the removal of the AHU units from the master POA, specifically regarding civic space and owner's responsibilities. The 2019 General Plan supports the integration of residential development into adjoining homeowners association to facilitate shared community amenities. As proposed, the AHU units in the Land Bay 2C would be removed from membership in the Master POA. Staff finds that this may limit access to shared community amenities for future residents and may reduce opportunities for neighborhood interaction and civic use. Staff recommends that applicant provide a proffered mechanism for continued access to shared community amenities for the residents. Staff notes that following the publication of the staff report for tonight's item, the applicant has indicated an intent to clarify the responsibilities of the AHU owner regarding the maintenance of common areas and administration of desired guidelines for Land Bay 2C. Staff could support Planning Commission approval of the application provided that revisions are made to address the outstanding issues identified by staff. Staff is available to answer any questions.

All right, thank you. Questions for staff? Mr. Moderator.

Yeah, so what would be the reason for someone to take out the access? Maybe I'm just jumping the gun here and asking why is the proposal to take out the access from the community pool and what's not the common things?

So essentially the applicant is proposing to remove the AHE units from the master POA, but I would have to defer to the applicant as to why they are asking for that amendment.

Mr. Chairman, do you want me to address that now or in our presentation? You can ask it when they... I'll cover that.

And you said they communicated with you afterwards. Did they give you the solution or they're just talking to you right now? Are you satisfied with whatever they provided?

Okay, currently we have received more recent submission but staff would need additional time to evaluate that submission. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Just follow up on that. That's the issue that I have concern about. Land Bay 2C has 54 market rate and 180 AHUs. Would this apply to all of Land Bay 2C or just the affordable units within Land Bay 2C? Just the affordable units. Just the affordable because it's segregated out. Right now, does the affordable unit component have its own amenities or are all the available amenities part of the master association?

So they do have two amenities on site, which is the children's play area and the gathering nodes.

Okay, and that's part of what would remain with this?

What would remain with...

Meaning if these 180 units are segregated, they still have these amenities associated with their units?

And so essentially what we're trying to do is to find additional clarification for that. Okay.

Okay. All right. So I guess I'll get to that with the applicant. With my concern being with this, is there removal from the Master Association if they still have access to all of the amenities? You've got 80% of the people paying for 100% of the people to use. It gets a bit of an inconsistency there. So we'll see when we get the applicant presentation. All right, let's go to the applicant presentation.

Good evening, Chair Kearse and members of the PC again. My name is Mike Romeo with Walsh Colucci. Here on behalf of Good Housing VA LLC this evening, Mr. Kim Hart with Good Housing. I'll just go pretty quickly. By the way, the F&A for Million Posting has been submitted. The purpose for the zoning concept plan amendment slash proffer amendment that Phil mentioned are the three points that are on the screen here. We're adding foreclosure language that's required by Virginia Housing. That's not an issue with staff. Clarifying the AHU partials that are subject to the master POA, that's where the issue lies effectively with staff. which we can provide clarification for you. It's modifying the approved parking with the concept development plan. Again, this is bringing it effectively in line with the current zoning ordinance. This is the foreclosure language that's being added to the proffer statement. We're adding this for other applications. You've already seen it actually. Atlanta Boulevard came through last year. This is slightly different language, but this is now approved by the county attorney's office and we've added this to the proffers. The second issue is the master POA and effectively we're excluding the AHUs from the master POA because it's not permitted to be a part of an HOA. We're revising the proffers to address that. That doesn't mean that the residents won't have access to the amenities of the POA. There's a separate amenity access agreement that is agreed upon prior to closing on the site where you can agree to have all the residents of the AHU building have access to those amenities, which will occur in this instance as well. So that's not what we're proposing. We're not proposing to remove that access. We're just proposing to remove the Master POA governance of the site. We've revised a number of proffers to address this, and we've met with staff twice in the past two weeks. We've had very good conversations with them to resolve these issues. It really is coming down to that specific issue about access to the amenities. And then how do you count the active recreation space that's on our property today? As was mentioned by Foyola, we have two amenity spaces totaling 700 square feet. The entirety of the development has over I think 130,000 square feet of active recreation space. So we're talking about 700 square feet on the AHU partials and this does just affect the AHU partials. So those are the two issues that remain. At this point in time, we've had a very good resolution of a lot of these issues with staff. If the Planning Commission sees it fit to recommend approval this evening, we will then have the county attorney review the proffers, and I believe at that point we will be able to resolve the final two issues as well. Just the last slide is about the parking. Again, there's a parking tabulation on the right-hand side. It's very hard to read. And the changes on the CDP are on the left-hand side. Effectively, what the parking standards do in the new ordinance is require additional parking than what's required today. But there are discounts provided for affordable housing, distance to bus stops, bicycle storage, and other things that allow you to reduce that down to the appropriate amount for an AHU building. Kim, do you want to add anything at this time? Wait.

to answer any questions you have at this time. All right, questions for the applicants.

Commissioner Miller. Thank you. Curiously, Kim, we're going to reduce parking by 112 units. 112 units is roughly 200 square feet per parking space, so that's a lot of land. That's over half an acre of land. What becomes of that land? Does it become estate remains open space? Does it become manicured lawns? What... half an acre that you don't need to build parking on. So what becomes of that property?

Good question. I hadn't thought of that. It remains basically mowed grass, I think. The main thing that we do by reducing that parking is that I don't have to build a podium at a million bucks. So we're saving a million bucks and being able to park this all with surface parking. So that's really the great benefit of And I would say we're just bringing the parking in line with those numbers that Commissioner Frank and I and others fought and died over in the zoning reorient.

Okay, but so then, so it really isn't necessarily creating extra open space because the 112 spaces would have to come through podium parking, not through surface parking. Yes, sir. Okay, all right, thank you.

Mr. Monterrey? Thank you. I don't think I really fully understood. These affordable units are not part of the master HOA, but they will still have access to the facilities? Somehow I lost my... understanding of this thing.

Thank you. That's the same as Chairman Kirsch's question. The really two unresolved questions that were on the table tonight, and the first is the one you just brought up about how we share amenities. We're in a situation here where The master developer creates the POA and it's in charge of creating and maintaining all the public spaces. But the Virginia Housing does not allow us as being funded by them to be a member of a POA. Just the philosophy of it is they do everything they can to get rents down, they're not gonna allow a homeowner's association or a POA to suddenly bring all that back up again with costs. So we just can't be, we can't belong. That was a mistake in the way the proffers were originally written, so now we're going back to fix it. staff has correctly said, well, wait a minute, if you're not in the POA, are you gonna take care of those spaces that they would have taken care of that are on your site? And the answer is yes, we will. And that's all those corrections have been made in the draft that the red line that staff has and we've agreed to do that. The question is, how is it that our residents get to use certain of the other community spaces that are available and run by the POA? And that's been a question that's been on the table or an issue that's been on the table for the last seven or eight years. And over those years, we've worked with the county attorney's office and come up with a very good way to do that. We call it an amenity access agreement. and that's an actual contract that we write with the master developer. We sit down with the master developer, we negotiate which public facilities our residents should be allowed to use, community room, community pool, any other special facilities that would be very useful for our residents to participate in. Our residents will have access to the tennis center if it ever gets built. My residents, our residents are not allowed to pay for that so we as the developer of the AHU building sit down, we negotiate that agreement with the master developer and what price we as the owner will pay for our residents to do that. We did just today send an example of that. I'm building the affordable portion of the Toll Brothers property at Cedars Terrace and we did exactly that. We negotiated with them an amenity access agreement and it's now filed with the clerk so anybody can see it. So we clarify that. I think the only disagreement between us and staff is staff would like us to do that by a proffer. We feel that it's way more complex than you can deal with with a proffer and we think that we've worked out a very good process with the County Attorney's Office. Because we get funding from the Housing Trust Fund, The county attorney's office has said for the last six or seven years that they're not going to allow us to get that funding unless we have that worked out with the master developer and we've had a very good track. I think I've written three of them now. We have a very good track record of how to do that. That's really just a kind of policy decision between us and staff and we'd like to go to the county attorney's office as our next step and get that sorted out. The other question on the table is what about our two active rec spaces? We have a children's tot lot and we have a gathering node. Because of issue number one, those have to be taken out of the POA, so who's gonna maintain them? We are. but staff has correctly raised a very important question. Well, wait a minute. Will those active rec spaces still be available to all of the other residents of the community? And the answer is they will not be because we are receiving, part of our funding for this project comes from tax exempt bonds and section 42 of the IRS code says that we cannot use tax exempt bonds to build public parks or public recreation facilities or whatever you want to call that. So we cannot make that a public access requirement. So the question on the table really is, well, if that's not open to everybody on the development, should that 700 square feet come out of the calculation, go someplace else on the site of the master developer? We say no. The rezoning was passed with that 700 square feet to be used as active rec for our residents. we have there's there's nothing we can find in the code that says all active rec space has to be open to every resident of the development and furthermore um the land bay next to us is an active breakfast an active adult age restricted facility and none of my residents can use their pool because they aren't old enough or except for a few of my residents are old enough so again this is kind of an issue we have to sit down with the county attorney's office and get sorted out and We think that that's really, we have the same goal of staff, we just have to figure out how to do it policy-wise, and we think it's best handled when we get to the county attorney's office. I hope that helped.

Thank you, Kim. I always give the best explanation for some reason.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Barnes?

Yeah, you said you can proffer it? You can proffer it? Well, if you're gonna do it anyway, what's wrong with proffering it? That's what a staff wants, and that's their, you know, we do our thing, and attorney does their thing. So, you know, that's theirs, but our staff wants it as proffered, so if you're gonna do it anyways, why don't you proffer it?

If we can find a way to do that, that will accommodate the complexity that the county attorney knows we have to deal with, we're certainly open to that.

So if county attorney says go ahead and do it, he will do it.

It's a matter of drafting language, sir, at this point, I think. If we can come up with a suitably worded proffer that gives us the flexibility to have that negotiation with the master developer in the future, if we can arrive at that language with the assistance of the county attorney's office, we can do that.

Okay, if I may yeah, thank you. I just want to like add a little bit of clarity to that so Part of what staff are looking for is we acknowledge that there may be a separate agreement executed But since this is a proffer and would apply to anyone who would develop this in the future or otherwise Setting some kind of baseline is what staff are sort of looking for not necessarily getting into the specifics of the agreement and we have been I mean We've been, like the applicant mentioned, meeting very regularly and those meetings have included the county attorney's office. So we are in coordination and I think so far we have identified most of the path forward and especially in the last two weeks. So I think we are on good shape and I think we got some more submission materials today. So there's more than one way to do it and we're just trying to ensure that there is at least that floor in the proffer, not the full thing. So I think we're on our way.

Okay, Commissioner Jasper.

Thank you. Hi, Kim. How are you? It does seem to me like this proffer around an amenity access principles would be something that can be crafted and language is not insurmountable. My concern, and I'd love to hear you address it, I recently looked back at some of the longitudinal research on section on hope six projects. Hope six, can you hear me? And the mixing of incomes has had over the long term or super beneficial effect, which is what they had hoped when They were started back in the Clinton administration. My concern here, and I know you're going to reassure me, is we're not creating a project in which there are two different sets of amenities, one for the people who live in the affordable units and another one for the people who don't live in the affordable units or in the market rate units. Part A of it and then kind of sub part B is you kind of talked about the corollary to the 700 square feet of tot lot and nodes, which is really tiny little spaces is how would you enforce not letting somebody come onto the affordable tot lot? I mean, I just, you know, I'm just, Yeah, I just can't imagine how that happens. So I'm just trying to see how this is going to work in principle if certain amenities are excluded from the access agreement.

Well, to answer your second question first, of course it's impossible to enforce. So we just can't put it in writing that we are officially paying for building it with bond funds or we're in violation of the federal code, section 42 of the IRS code. But of course people come on and of course we pay no attention to it and we tell our insurance company to ignore it. So that's that part. I think your bigger question is, more importantly, and it's the question that especially Belkis Escobar in the County Attorney's Office has been on a mission to address for the last six or seven years. For a long time, there were in the past, it was, our residents truly were not allowed in some instances to use the public facilities of the larger master development and that was not a good thing in my opinion and Ms. Escobar agreed and based on that and the fact that She was helping write the terms of the loan agreement that we would sign in order to get funds from the county. It was made very clear that our residents would have access to those facilities that make sense in the greater development. And so that whole negotiation is watched over by the county attorney's office and we all come to agreement. What we really come down to is that we want to have fund together in the activities where it makes sense. What I'm not gonna get, what I can't get dragged into is helping to pay for all the landscaping, the gold statue, and everything else that the HOA might wanna do. And that's why we have to be so specific in our negotiations that we're only gonna be part of certain public facilities that really make sense so that we don't end up paying for a whole lot of maintenance of the HOA facilities that really should not be put onto the burden of the affordable part. so we really our residents really are now thanks to all that work over the last few years very much a part of the community spaces and i think we see the benefit of that you're great commissioner combs thank you mr chair

Kim, you mentioned Cedar Terrace, Waxpool Apartments, right? We haven't seen ZCPAs for either of those projects. How is this amenities proffer? How are those issues tackled at those projects where again, you're part of a master development trying to blend and I think successfully have blended your use with the master use. How are all those issues handled there?

Well, you didn't see them before because we got it fixed, so you didn't have to. The issue here is that these proffers were written before I got involved, and I think there were some perhaps oversights. I wouldn't, you know, I'm not, whatever. Sometimes things happen too quickly, but in any event, this whole ZCPA is about just cleaning things up and getting it in line with the way it should be done. And in those two projects, again, because we had the process of the amenity access agreement, that all became part of the loan process that we worked out with Department of Housing Community Development and the County Attorney's Office, so it never became an issue for you guys to deal with.

So there is successful precedent in doing that amenity access agreement, both at those projects and others. Okay, thanks.

All right, Commissioner Myers.

Yeah, I mean from the way I've been looking at this and the research I've done is it looks like to me what this really is is it's a mechanism of budget because you can predetermine what you're going to be spending annually and your contribution is going to be for those amenities to those homeowners where if it's left to the discretion of either the developer or the overall market unit, they could decide next year it makes sense to build a second swimming pool. Now all of a sudden your group now gets to have the luxury of being a beneficiary of also paying that fee even though they really can't afford it. So you come up with your own agreement. It's not that you're not paying, but as you agree up front what you're going to pay annually by making that annual payment and it has the escalator on it, then they get that money for them to use and have those facilities, but it's not then counted against them for what they have to pay each month. So it's really a budget way, in the way I look at it, in a way of making sure that all of a sudden you're not basically financed out because somebody wants four different pools that your folks can't afford. So to me, and it also makes me think of, we've seen this where, whether it's an Ashburn Village, an Ashburn Farm, a Cascades, all of a sudden somebody buys an abutting piece of property. And that developer wants to be able to join into that master plan because it makes more sense. They negotiate that price. They decide what they can afford, what they can't afford. And then the two parties sign a commitment of how this is how we're gonna work together. To me, this is simply that. simplistically that same thing. It's agreeing up front on how we're going to work together. I think as far as the space and not knowing or not saying that necessarily it's open to the public. I mean, we can make that same argument for every rezoning we do. I mean, the tot lots given to that association, the tot lots giving to that pod, but you know, you know, well, I never lived in a pod and I can tell you my kids enjoyed half the tot lots in Ashburn, you know, but the police never came and told us to get off because they know we don't have an Ashburn member. I did get kicked out of the pavilion once, but Swimming. But like I said, you know, that's just the way it goes. So, I mean, whether we add on something in this access assessment agreement that also covers those two little spots that just says for tax purposes, this should be done for your community. I think that the county attorney can do that. I don't think it's something that we need to take to a work session and mull over to decide how's the best way to wordsmith it. Thank you.

I'd respond to your first comment, you're dead on. The reason we do negotiate that agreement ahead of closing is that if that were to be left open, the underwriters for Virginia Housing or for the tax credit investors would set aside such an enormous amount of money requiring us to, they're the good lawyers that think of all the worst cases and then they would make us set aside reserves that we couldn't afford. So that's exactly why we have to do it.

So my comments, question on this. The applicant, you prefer nothing in the proffers about this, just execute an agreement between your association and the master association for a fee to use certain amenities within the community. That's what your proposal is. So keep it out of the proffers, but execute a separate agreement outside of the proffers.

I wouldn't maybe call it a tradition, but that's been the process we've used for the last five or six years with the county attorney's office. I haven't had an opportunity to see a template or anything like that. It could be a little tricky to try and figure this out, but to Commissioner Barnes' point, you know, if we can come up with some language that would satisfy the county attorney's office as a proffer and yet leave us the discretion to deal with this complexity. I mean, this contract is usually six or eight pages in length with lots of attachments to it. It's really complex. So if we can come up with proffer language that'll allow us to do that in the future, I have no objection to that.

And from staff, it sounded like you're okay with there being an agreement reached outside the property, but something in the Proffers that basically says there will be an agreement.

That's right, and we have examples of doing that in the past.

Is the applicant satisfied with that? Something in the Proffers says there will be an agreement, but the details are done outside of... We're okay with that. Okay.

The reason why...

Having dealt with an association and sub association members, and it's not like you're being added, you are part of the community. And your section of the community rises and falls with the entire community, because it's really gonna be seen as one cohesive community. My only concern is that between developers, some agreement is reached that, because at some point, guess what, the developer's out of the picture and the homeowner's got to take over footing the bill for everything. and I wanna make sure that the agreement reached is fair in the long term. I bring this up from an experience in my community where we had the residents and they built some apartment complexes and the developer decided that, well, they're not gonna use, they created a sub-rate and started them off at such a low cost per unit, it took us, 20 years, raising them the maximum amount every year to get to the point where they were finally paying what they should have been paying from the beginning. So I have a little reticence towards agreements reached between developers, because at the end of the day, they're around a few years, the homeowners are footing the bill for forever. But Mr. Hart, knowing you, I don't think you would ever do that. So I'm okay with this concept moving forward. So I don't have any issues with it then. Sounds like you kind of have a way to work this out. I would just ask County, make sure you're looking out. The agreement is written with the long-term benefits of all the residents in mind. All right, I think that was it with comments. We'll open up the public hearing. I do have one person signed up to speak. That is Emily Johnson with the PEC.

That's good. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Emily Johnson with the Piedmont Environmental Council. I know you've discussed this, but we are concerned about the developer's proposal to exclude attainable housing units for membership in the Property Owners Association, POA, and think the applicant would do well to explain how this action serves residents in the way the development was envisioned. It appears to have serious implications for equity and neighborhood cohesion as it effectively segregates lower income residents by removing them from the overarching community association. in which all other homeowners participate. While Kim may have just given a funding reason, there is no language in the applicant's statement of justification explaining the rationale on the specific change to the POA. That's definitely something that should be written in their submission, just like they wrote that the change in foreclosure language has to do with the VHDA requirements. We're also under the impression that not only are AHUs manageable in other community associations in Loudoun, but the original proffer language already allowed for some sub associations as necessary. As it is, this has introduced complications and staff concerns beyond the logistical impact and decreased administrative and maintenance efficiency, it risks excluding 180 families from full community participation, limiting their access to amenities like the pool and events, to shared services like trash and snow removal, and to a voice in POA governance. Staff has also raised that this separation could have counter implications, potentially restricting broader community access to the gathering and play areas in the vicinity of the attainable units. It will require very careful proper language or legal agreement, and our question is, to what end? We can see that the language was updated in October to provide some assurances and updated again in April, but it's still unclear, even after the applicant's presentation, why this division is absolutely necessary, and we agree with staff that the proposal may diminish opportunities for neighborhood interaction. The applicant should be more upfront about why they feel this is necessary and should show that it's somehow a net positive for the residents in order to gain your recommendation. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak to this application? Nope. Is anybody signed up? Nope. All right. The public hearing is now closed. Would the applicant like to respond to the comment made? Nope. All right. This is in the Catoctin District, so I'll go to Commissioner Miller for a motion.

Thank you.

I move to the Planning Commission Forward Leggie 2025-0054 Village of Clear Springs Land Bay 2C ZCPA 2025-0008 to the Board of Supervisors with a recommendation of approval subject to the proffer statement dated May 26th, 2026 and based on the findings for approval provided attachments three and five to the June 23rd, 2026 Planning Commission Public Hearing Staff Report.

Six. A motion made by Commissioner Miller, seconded by Commissioner Combs. Commissioner Miller, do you have an opening?

I do. This is essentially some cleanup language to get this project, this portion of this project in line with, for one, state code, and two, the way we've done things, that these have been done for years and passed. As far as... the membrane of understanding or language to such to allow the residents of Mr. Hart's development here to use the amenities of the Master Association. I have extraordinary confidence that between this meeting today and when this reaches the Board of Supervisors, that will be done satisfactorily, especially considering we have existing language already in this county in recent years. indicating the same. And I appreciate Mr. Hart for taking over this particular project and finding these inconsistencies from the original approvals and correcting them here with us today. Thank you.

Commissioner Jasper.

I have a question perhaps for Commissioner Miller. Given that we've had this conversation and that the applicant is agreeable to, as one of its proffers, kind of putting in language that relates to the amenity access agreement in principle, I would like that to be a condition of approval that goes forward to the Board of Supervisors, that that be included among the conditions of approval, that that language be included in the proffer.

One point of clarification is that there aren't conditions associated with this application. The applicant would need to proffer something like that. Would need to proffer. Okay.

The condition would be that the applicant proffered to that matter.

We would be fine with that in proper language to address that. I think that's what we'll have to do with the County Attorney's Office.

Okay, that's fine. That would have to be a friendly amendment to?

I would consider that a friendly amendment to include language in the proffer that a community access agreement will be reached between the association and the master association. Fair enough. Thank you. Eric, a seconder to you? Okay. All right, Mr. Myers.

I too will be supporting the motion. Mr. Hart, if we could just keep the General Assembly from making changes, your life would be so short of all these things. You have to come to see us. You could just do what you do and spend a lot less money. But unfortunately, every two years they make a change and you have to come back because you got approved a year before they made the change. I think this is a cleanup like we've all said. I think it would be nice to say they can just afford and make every amenity and pay all the money, but it's non-realistic because then they won't get the home. So you sometimes have to pick, is the amenity more important or is it giving them that first start that's more important? And I think you have, made this program work and there's more people that are now getting homes but they're not feeling like a second-class citizen because of the way you've worked the program for them and integrating them into the existing project. So I just wanted to compliment you also for what you endure with us each time you come to visit us. Thank you.

There's a question just for a clue. So if the answer was no, you must remain a member of the Master Properties Association and you can't get out of it, what would the result of that be?

The Virginia Housing in their tax credit manual, which is definition, it's this thick and it's the working out of section 42 of the IRS code, which created the low income housing tax credit program, says that we cannot be a member of any POA that we don't control. So I simplified to say we can't be a member of a POA because I don't think that the Heinz organization or the entire other 1,077 homeowners would let us control their homeowners association. So we simply can't be a part of it. So to say that we had to would basically make it impossible for me to fund the project. Which means these 180 affordable homes would disappear. No, it would mean that I couldn't get funding from my low-income housing tax credit program and I think the fallback would be that the if the the way this was written is that the master developer would provide 120 some affordable units under the previous, of their own method, however they chose to do that. So there'd be a net loss of about 60? Yes.

Okay, all right, that was my comment. Commissioner Miller, do you have a closing?

I do not.

All right, so we have a motion to approve the application. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And that motion will also carry nine to zero. Thank you very much. All right, folks, let's go ahead and take a 10-minute break and start up again at 8.25 sharp. And we've got three items left. All right, we go ahead and get started again. Our next application is LEGI 2025-63, Loudon School for Advanced Studies, ZMAP 2025-19, ZCPA 2025-9, Special Exception 2025-149, and Special Exception 2025-150.

Darby. Good evening. My name is Darby Metcalf with the Department of Planning and Zoning. I'm here tonight to present the application for Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. The subject property is approximately 10 acres located north of Route 7, east of George Washington Boulevard, and south of Research Place in the Algonquin Election District in the suburban mixed-use place type. The subject property is zoned Planned Development Research and Development Park under the 1972 Loudoun County Zoning Ordinance. The applicant requests a zoning map amendment to convert from PDRDP under the 1972 ordinance to PDRDP under the current Loudoun County zoning ordinance. Additionally, the applicant requests a zoning concept plan amendment to revise existing proffers to permit a private school use for up to 40 students and two minor special exceptions to permit a private school use and modify outdoor play area requirements and in lieu of the anticipated outdoor play area to provide an indoor play area and on-site programming with additional off-site locations. Present on screen is an annotated excerpt of the concept development plan. The proposed private school is indicated in blue within the existing buildings and existing buildings are indicated in red. The property is within the larger University Center campus, which rezoned 192 acres to permit multifamily residential, hotel, conference center, and research and development. The 2019 General Plan policies recommend citing institutional uses such as private schools proximate to existing residential communities. Consistent with plan policies to mitigate visual impacts, the proposal does not propose exterior modifications to existing buildings or reductions to setbacks in open space. Conditions of approval have been recommended by staff to include the number of students, hour of operation, and bicycle racks. Staff have identified one outstanding issue associated with tonight's application. The 2019 general plan anticipates development within the place type as compact pedestrian oriented developments. Additionally, the countywide transportation plan anticipates bicycle and pedestrian connectivity with building entrances to sidewalks. The application does not include connectivity to existing bike lanes and sidewalks along research place and staff recommended the applicant demonstrate bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. Present on screen is an annotated excerpt of the concept development plan with his existing bicycle and pedestrian facilities indicated along research place with existing sidewalks in a dashed circle black and bicycle lanes in an orange box dash. Recommended direction of bicycle pedestrian connectivity could be aligned approximately within the alignment of the purple to connect to existing facilities. Staff supports a Planning Commission recommendation of approval of the applications subject to the conditions of approval and resolution of the identified outstanding issue. Staff are available for questions.

All right, thank you. Questions for staff? Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Darby.

I'm all for pedestrian connectivity. One of the concerns I have about doing it on this particular site is this cluster of four buildings, as it goes down Research Drive, sits well below Research Drive. so any connections would necessitate some sort of stairwell or staircase or something like that so you could get from, you could walk safely from Research down to these buildings. Other than the line of showing how they come through, you would recommend they come through along the drive aisle, how else would we recommend to the applicant that they connect from pedestrian uses from the elevation that Research Drive has?

The delta in elevation between Research Place and the existing facilities is eight feet in height over a length of 172 feet in length in the alignment of that purple recommended alignment.

So that would be from the first entrance. But the second entrance, closer to the, for lack of a better term, the police academy, that's just an even greater slope. So as long as it's one side with a lesser grade, that you're OK with?

The Corps of Staffs is that the existing sidewalk facilities in the campus connect to the pedestrian and bicycle facilities on Research Place. Alignment and direction is at the applicant's discretion on how they proceed to do so and how they see as best fit. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Jasper.

Hi, Darby, thank you. Does Loudoun County have a SHARO program? So for bicycle connectivity, right, rather than having a sharrow is you take a drive lane and you paint arrows on it that make it clear that it's shared use between bicycles. They call it a sharrow.

I'm unsure. I don't have the answer in front of me right now on a sharrow and whether or not that program.

Just trying to think if there's something, you know, that's simple that could solve this issue somewhat. Okay. Thank you.

Commissioner Banks. Darby, I understand that for this particular school use, there is not expected to be pedestrian students walking to school or anything like that. Does that change staff's view on the necessity of having this pedestrian access?

An approval of the application would create an entitlement within the land that lives beyond the present application. If a subsequent school would be to fill the site, we would have the expectations, the plan policy be carried forward for those applications. While yes, we understand that the application does not anticipate walking, the plan policy is for pedestrian and bicycle connectivity. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Myers.

So I want to understand because this is really this is a tenant fit out internal fit out. This is not somebody that owns the lane and has control of the right ways that we're now asking them to do this. Did you take that into consideration at all that we're actually asking them to do something that they really don't have the rights to do?

Overall, I would say it was reviewed from a planning standpoint of what would be the best on the site, but we're not privy to like the specifics of the tenancy or the arrangement. Overall, the permission goes with the whole site.

Well, with all due respect, it goes with the particular use, not just the site. It would have to be somebody else also wanting to do a private school. It wouldn't necessarily be carte blanche, but to me, I think part of this, I can understand if this was Amazon coming in, they bought GW University property and trying to redo something and they own the property, but this is a tenant fit ad is all this is. I also know from driving down there this past weekend, there are karate places. There's a dance thing there. I mean, to me, those are private paid for that are, I could stretch out to say that that's a school. It's a school of dance. It's a school of karate. And none of them have bicycle paths around them.

I guess to clarify, when evaluating the specific use in this specific site and how the site already functions and circulates and works, I think the other tenants would likely benefit from a sidewalk, but the recommendation was for an additional sidewalk, not bicycle connectivity or facility.

You want the purple now to be a sidewalk?

The recommendation by staff is bicycle and pedestrian connectivity. We're allowing leeway from the applicant to provide a direction on how they are to achieve staff's recommendation.

How do you think we get these in the right of way?

There's a recommendation from DTCI for a crosswalk to that sidewalk on the north side of Research Place.

they'd be better off to go buy a building by the time they get through paying for all of this for 40 kids. I'm just saying at some point we have, with all due respect, we have to apply some common sense here too to the intent of the use. Did you all go and look at the current site where they're at? Yes. So you realize that the current, I mean, my house is one half mile from that school. I drive by it every day, every night. There are no sidewalks here that really connect them back to my community. There are no bicycle paths. Well, there's a WOD and stuff. There's no fencing around that. I mean, it's a beautiful piece of property that they've created that really blends in with the old church. That's the old one room black schoolhouse that's still there. I don't understand why we want this to be 10 times multiplied for things that this 40 kids don't really need.

If that is the will of the commission, then that is perfectly okay.

So would you all be more comfortable, because I noticed you made the comment about you want to have an actual condition that is for a maximum of 40 kids. Would you be more comfortable if we said it is for a maximum of 40 kids that they don't necessarily, because they're not gonna get on their bicycles, they're not walking back over there to do that. Would that make staff more comfortable with the idea that there were reasons why we didn't look at the bicycle and pedestrian facility being needed?

Could I ask that back Commissioner to make sure I understand? Was the question whether staff would prefer or how staff would analyze a condition added that limits the total number to 40 students?

Would that satisfy you or make you more comfortable with the idea that there's really not a need for all this bicycle and pedestrian assets then because the limitation on the use?

Right now the conditions are drafted that they are at 40. That's just memorializing the request. So I think that's where it is.

But I'm just saying wouldn't that doesn't that make you comfortable knowing that they can't be more than 40 people. There can't be more than 40 young people coming in there. They're going to come at one point. They're going to leave at one point. There might be some early though. The buckload is going to come at one point and leave at one point.

Understood. Yes. A site that generated more traffic would likely have yielded a different maybe even Yeah, a different recommendation then yes understood.

Okay. All right.

Thank you So just to be clear This application is it being brought forward and these amendments being paid for by the owner of this property or by the use that wants to use part of this property and Who is actually the applicant that's paying? Who is actually doing, is it the end, the user, or is it the owner of the buildings? How do you determine that?

So to bring forward an application requires two party signatures. It requires an applicant and also the property owner's signature.

Okay. Let's try it another way, Cliff, because the owner has to sign it because they have the legal rights to it. Who is paying for this application?

My client is the tenant in the application, not the owner of the land.

The tenant is paying for this application to go forward?

Yes.

Thank you. That's all I have. We will go to the applicant for presentation.

Great. If staff could pull up my presentation, that'd be wonderful. For the record, my name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner at Curata Partners. With me, I've got Tommy Roche, one of my colleagues, and then Mark DeWitt, who is not only the parent of a student who just graduated earlier this month from the academy, from Loudoun School of Advanced Studies, but also the board chair. Let's see. Let's see. That's my trick, Allison. Okay, great. A little bit about the school. It is a school for students aged middle through high school who don't necessarily or didn't necessarily fit in well with the traditional school model. Some of them are gifted, some are supremely gifted, some have just general concerns in a regular classroom. So what they've done is they've found a home for themselves at Loudoun School of Advanced Studies. The school... It was previously located in Ashburn up until last month when they are now in need of finding new space. They've found this property along the north side of Route 7. It's a 10-acre parcel. They would occupy a portion of this building shown here in blue. It is planned suburban mixed-use place type. What you can see on this plan is the site is fully developed. As I mentioned, it is a 10-acre parcel. They would have a lease for a portion of one of the buildings there. So to Commissioner Pullen-Meyer's comments, they are a tenant in the building. They're not the owner of the property. They do not control the overall site conditions. The application has multiple aspects to it. First off, it's zone 1972 and it has very old proffers on it. So we need to first bring it into the current ordinance because in the PDRDP 72 ordinance, a private school was not a contemplated use. So we'll bring it into the current ordinance, but then we also need to amend the proffers because when those proffers were drafted back in 1992, what they did is they listed all of the uses that were contemplated in the ordinance at that time. As I said, a private school wasn't permitted and therefore wasn't contemplated. Therefore, we need to amend the proffers here to list private school as a use. In the 2023 ordinance, private school does require a minor special exception. We have conditions of approval that have capped the size of the school and the number of students at the school. We would only be capped at 40 students, which does, we think, help mitigate some of the comments that you all have talked about earlier. Additionally, we have a minor special exception to waive the zoning ordinance requirement for outdoor play space. This is a requirement in the ordinance for all private schools independent of the age of the private schools. As I mentioned, these are middle and high schoolers. They don't really need a fenced play yard. Additionally, at the property, there's a lot of good outdoor open space already that they will have access to. This is a picture of the building of which they'll be occupying a portion of. What you can see is there's lots of sidewalks all around the building. The students here will be driven by their parents, they'll drive themselves, or they may arrive or leave on the school van that they have. With 40 students, we don't anticipate anyone living right in this community walking here. That said, there are sidewalks all around the building today that are shown in the dark black dots. So once they park at the campus, easy to get into the building or to the internal kind of open space area. Additionally, as Darby mentioned, there is a sidewalk that exists today along Research Park. So the request from staff has been to lead to connect the sidewalk along Research Park down our private drive aisle. As I mentioned, we don't anticipate any students walking here. We think that's an incredibly costly expense for a nonprofit, which is what this school is, especially because they don't own the property. I went backwards. In terms of the special exception request for the outdoor play space, what Loudoun School of Advanced Studies has been able to do at their current Ashburn campus and what they plan to continue doing is they actually use some multipurpose room space inside. They also have partnerships. and take the kids outside for activities. They'll do pickleball, they'll do karate lessons, they'll go to county public parks, they've got the van here. And so there's a lot of opportunity for these kids to get outside and recreate, which is why we don't think there is that need for the designated outdoor play space. Additionally, this property does have a really nice internal courtyard that is protected by those four buildings that the students would have access to. and so I'm happy to answer any questions. We do have several students from the school who are here and their parents. They have signed up to speak, but they're also happy to wave and show their support for the application if the commission would like that instead.

All right, questions for the applicant? Commissioner Barnes.

Yes, sir, I have a very small question. What are you gonna coach or teach there?

So it's an accredited school, so middle and high school.

What's that?

Middle and high school.

Okay, you're gonna teach any training or something there or just books?

It's taking the place of normal public school curriculum, so it's accredited and we have to fulfill all the requirements in order to allow it.

It's a middle school, that's what it is.

Middle school and high school.

Middle school and high school, correct.

High school, okay, there you go, okay, I got it.

Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Molly, what's your timing here? I assume you need to be in here And operating so that students can get to school at the beginning of the fall semester, is that?

Yes, thank you for the question. Yes, they did just leave their last space at the end of last month, early this month, and so they do need this approval to be able to operate in August, September for the school year, which is why we have been graciously double advertised.

You are double advertised.

To be able to go, if this commission recommends approval, to be able to go to the Board of Supervisors next month.

And do you, when does tenant fit out commence when the approval issues? Well, basically as soon as possible. Yeah, okay, thank you.

I will say we're lucky that the landlord has some furniture in the building that they're gonna allow us to use. So it's not gonna be a big lift. We're not making any alterations to the space. We're just gonna get in there and then figure out what we need to change, you know, as we go. Sort of paint as you go. Yeah, exactly. Okay, thank you. Vice Chairman, are you ready?

Thank you. Molly, just same kind of a questioning, line of questioning in terms of the timing. So are you guys signing a long-term lease or what kind of lease you guys are signing so that I can understand and make a decision better in terms of the sidewalk issue the staff brought up?

I can answer that. It's a five-year lease.

Okay. You guys are not building anything You have no plans right now to permanently move somewhere else?

No, we don't have any plans at the moment. This is our primary location that we're focused on. If we can't make it for this, we do have to find a different place. So we do have to think about where we're gonna house the students. But this is what we've been working on since last summer, since the parents banded together and converted the school to a nonprofit. This is what we've been working on.

Thank you.

Yes? No? Okay, I will open up the public hearing on this item, and we do have a number of speakers signed up to speak, and by all means, if you would like to speak, please do so. I will call out the first few names, and we have two podiums. You can step up to one of the podiums when your name is, when you're next to speak. So first we'll have Emily Johnson, followed by Mark DeWitt, followed by Marta McNamara.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Emily Johnson on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. A school needs good pedestrian access. It needs to be safe for students to reach and it needs to be safe for students to walk around outside. If the applicant is just the tenant, then it is still worth the conversation about how students might reach other sidewalks. what the building owner feels could serve all tenants, and if there are any options even beyond the concrete sidewalk to improve safety or visibility. Beyond these essentials, staff suggestion to establish a trail connection to the neighboring Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, but also enhance student connectivity and is worth considering as we promote nature access, healthy movement, and a lifetime of multimodal transportation options for students. Thank you.

Thank you. Mark DeWitt. That's you, so you're the applicant. Yes. So you can't speak. You've had your 10 minutes.

All good.

Thank you. Marta McNamara to be followed by Megan Seltzer and then Kim Sonine, something like that.

We lost one of our speakers because it went a little bit late, so that was Kim.

Okay.

So good evening, my name is Marta McNamara. I'm a parent of two students at Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. A few years ago, both of my children were struggling in the public school setting. Both were deemed gifted, but with no behavior problems at all, but they were struggling with significant sadness and anxiety. One of my children was bullied. One was finally diagnosed with clinical anxiety. We reached a point where we felt there was no choice but to withdraw them from the public school setting and we commenced homeschooling. We were worried not only about their education but about their overall well-being. Then we found Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. For the first time in a long time, my children felt that they truly belonged. They found teachers who really understood them, peers who accepted them, and a community where they felt they had a genuine sense of peace. Today, my child who struggled with clinical anxiety is in remission. Both of my children are thriving academically, socially, and emotionally. LSAS has truly changed the trajectory of their lives. LSAS is a home for children who do not necessarily fit the mold of a traditional school system. There is absolutely no other school like it, I know, because we searched and searched in our time of desperation. I'm here tonight to encourage you to approve this application. The timing is especially important because the school year is approaching quickly. Families like mine are counting on LSAS having a permanent home for the coming school year. Delays would create uncertainty and significant stress for my children and our family. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Next up, Megan Seltzer. And I guess Kim is not here to be followed by Scott Shumway.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Dr. Megan Salter. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes to listen to my family's story and I'm gonna try not to cry. So my beautiful child Lane in the duck shirt here has always been a bright, happy, creative, intelligent child until we stepped into the doors of LCPS Middle School. For two years, I struggled to give my child some relief and they didn't find it. They're exceptionally gifted. They were not given a chance to excel. They were bullied for who they are. And one night as I was sitting in the psychiatric emergency room at Children's National Hospital because my child told me that they didn't want to live anymore, I knew I had to find something to change. And I know we have heard comments today about sidewalk and pedestrian access and making sure our children are safe. This school existing makes my child safe. And I can't stress that enough. My child is alive today because of Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. My child needs a home this fall because Loudoun County Public Schools failed my child. And I cannot stress that enough. I understand that there are rules to follow. I am a compliance professional. I am the annoying person that comes to people and says, I'm sorry, you can't do that. But I'm also the compliance professional that comes to them and says, we will find a way to make this work. So I am asking each and every one of you today to find a way to make this work. So my beautiful child who is now thriving and happy and creative and singing again in our household, and by the way, much like Marta's child, probably doesn't need to be on the antidepressant medication anymore because they are so happy. They have found a home, they have found friends, they have found teachers who have become their peer. I can't even tell you how amazing it is. So thank you so much for taking a moment to listen to my story. And as you make your decision tonight, I just ask that you consider the fact that this school is a lifeline for the students that walk into that door every day. And this is something that is desperately needed. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Last speaker is Scott Shumway.

Evening, thank you again for your time. I don't know if I can follow that quite as well, but it's not the exact same story, but it's very, very similar. My child, Cyrus, sitting next to the duck shirt. We started homeschooling, but when my two older children graduated out of that, Cyrus looked around and had the maturity and the wherewithal to be, I'm alone, I need to find some people. And so we looked and we found Elsass. And it's very similar, it's been a bit of a lifeline and he has thrived over the last year and a half. We entered halfway through the school year last year and a half ago to give it a try and it worked out extremely well. So we were thrilled. And then the previous owners of the school decided that they were done. And so as you heard mentioned, the parents banded together to turn into a nonprofit. And I imagine many of you probably have some inkling of what that takes and the amount of energy and effort that the parents and the students all put into making this thing survive this past year. And so now losing our facility, we need someplace else to do the same and to keep it going. So it's like a startup. And so we're looking for that home that we can continue to serve these kids with. And so I appreciate your time and your consideration and thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak to this application?

No, anybody in line? Nope. All right, the public hearing is now closed. Any final comments that staff of the applicant would like to make? Nope. All right, this application is in the Algonquin District, so I'll go to Commissioner Banks for a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that, excuse my voice, I move that the Planning Commission forward a leggy 2025-0063 Loudoun School for Advanced Studies, ZMAP 2025-0019, ZCPA 2025-0009, specs 2025-0149 and specs 2025-0150 to the Board of Supervisors with a recommendation of approval. subject to the proffer statement dated June 3, 2026, the conditions of approval dated June 3, 2026, and based on the findings for approval provided as attachments one, two, and three to the June 23, 2026 Planning Commission Public Hearing Staff Report.

Second. Okay, motion made by Commissioner Banks, seconded by Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Banks, do you have an opening?

Yes, I do, very briefly. Just so that it is clear for my colleagues here on the dais, you will note that when I made my motion, I specifically excluded any reference to the outstanding issue and did not include in my motion anything to do about the sidewalk or bicycle. That was intentional on my part. Throughout my professional career, I have spent significant amount of time, volunteer time on boards involving educational issues for children. And I'm currently the chair of a early childhood development board. So I've looked at these issues and worked with them most of my adult career. With that said, I'm very much in support of Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. I understand very much the difficulty it is turning an organization into a nonprofit and sometimes the dearth of financing to do anything at all that is extra and I conclude that this sidewalk issue would be an extra matter for this school and I simply do not wish to hamper or hinder them from moving forward with their very important mission for this very important segment of our student population here in the county. So I am wholeheartedly in support of it as is. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Myers.

I, too, will support Commissioner Banks' motion, and I, too, agree that I believe there is not an outstanding issue in this application. I don't believe the sidewalk or the bike path is needed with this. Also, as we said, it's a tenant fit-out for 40 kids. I also want to just take two minutes and, just like Commissioner Banks, wholeheartedly thank the parents for what they're doing because the easy thing to do here would just be we're done, the hard thing to do is decide your kids are worth it. Especially you, you've had your daughter graduate and you're still there sitting at that table and you're going to make sure the next child has the same opportunity. I too have done nonprofits in this county and I know it is no easy task. I know that you've been Bowmead, now you've been to Ashburn and now you're going to go back to George Mason or George Washington University, but I want to really wholeheartedly thank you guys for caring about the future, taking this on, and I wish you great success. Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm very happy to support this motion. This is one of those instances where I wish our land use considerations didn't stand so much in the way of you getting to where you need to be as quickly as you need to be. I appreciate staff working with this applicant to move this application along as quickly as you all have. I know that means a lot for them. Yeah, I think without hesitation or qualification, this should move forward. Commissioner Burns.

I will be very happy to support this thing.

Commissioner Miller. Quite often, Commissioner Banks is one of the last to speak and he's subject to simply saying I agree with my colleagues. In deference to him, I will say I associate my comments with Commissioner Banks.

All right, I'll also be supporting the motion. In retrospect, I wish the LCPS application came after this one. So we have a motion to approve the application. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will pass nine zero. Thank you very much, good luck. All right, next, ledgy 2025-26, Loudon Panel Wiring Shop, special exception 2025-49, special exception 2025-138.

Good evening. My name is Tess Lynch with the Department of Planning and Zoning here to present the application for Loudon Panel Wiring Shop. The subject property is a 114.58 acre parcel located in the transition residential zoning district in the Little River Election District. It is located in the transition large lot neighborhood place type. The applicant is requesting a special exception to add outdoor storage to its approved utility center use and a special exception to reduce the parking from 144 spaces to 57. The Public Service Utility Center was previously approved in 2024. It is currently under construction and is due to be completed in the fall of 2026. Present on screen is an annotated specs plot. The limits of the specs are shown in purple, the approved wiring shop is shown in green, and the proposed outdoor storage area is shown in yellow. The general plan envisions employment uses in this place type that have a minimal impact on the surrounding area with maintenance facilities listed as a conditional use. Given this proposed facility sufficient distance and proximity to other public utility facilities, staff finds these modifications appropriate. Staff has recommended conditions related to on-site structure construction and assembly, restrictions along the southern access point, sign installation, specimen tree preservation, and reforestation. Staff supports the recommendation of approval of this application to the board subject to the conditions of approval. Staff is happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you. Questions for staff? Commissioner Barnes? Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Anybody? Last chance? Commissioner Jasper?

So, I'm sorry waiting at a chance to talk previously, Tess. Can you describe how this application relates to the existing proffered setbacks for the facility when we approved it in 2024? What kind of changes will be occurring because of this new outdoor storage?

The setbacks will not be changing. This, I bring up the... If you could pull up an image. So the outdoor storage area in yellow is where the previously approved parking area was. So that footprint isn't changing.

Okay, and the little purple running through it, that's not a bull run tributary, is it? That is a risker buffer. So this new outdoor storage building will be intruding into the risker buffer?

It was already approved this way with the previous application and reforestation has been conditioned to alleviate that problem.

I remember when we discussed this previously, we had some concerns about the appearance of the facility and what would be visible from the road. passing as you pass by. Do we have any sense of what the facades are for this? I do not. I defer to the applicant if they have any.

Great. I'll save that question. Thank you. I will just add that the scope of this application was to add simply the outdoor storage. It was not to touch anything about the existing approval or the building that was already approved in a prior legislative application.

And is the outdoor storage, I feel like I saw something about a building in this, but perhaps I'm wrong. We can ask the applicant, but I must be confusing it with another application.

Anybody else? Does the applicant have a presentation?

Am I audible? Yep. Good evening. I'm John Carnes with Kimley Horne, civil engineer. Also accompanying me is Chuck Infante and Kristen McDonald with Dominion Energy. I'm here to talk about our project and I think we'll be able to answer those one or two questions as well. So these two special exceptions as previously discussed were for the, here we go, for the site that is already under construction. This panel wiring shop was approved with the commission permit and subsequent site plan and is currently under construction. We're hoping to have everything wrapped up this fall and be operational. The purpose of the facilities you may recall from that approval is the assembly of control panels and control enclosures, which are very important for the upgrades to critical infrastructure in the county. What that means is we are currently only operating out of one facility of this kind in Fisherville, Virginia, and the demand has rapidly exceeded the capacity of that facility. That's why we planned, got approved with the commission permit and subsequent site plan, the facility that's under construction right now. So the question came about, well, what about the building? We're not proposing any buildings within the storage area per se. It has been, is under construction, was approved as a flat paved area at the rear of the site. It will then be utilized for the storage of what are called control enclosures. And you can see a photo of one in the lower left-hand corner, as well as the dimensions, 50 feet long, 12 feet wide, 13 feet tall. And these are part of the critical infrastructure upgrades that will be assembled, finalized at the facility, and then moved out to Dominion Energy facilities. So they won't be there permanently, but there will be a few staged and ready to be picked up and moved out after the final assembly work is completed. From a distance, they'll look like very small little structures, but they're not permanent structures. Yeah. So to answer the other question about visibility, you can see in the top right photo, this is the image from the southern entrance to the site, which is technically only a right out entrance of the facility that's currently under construction in the top left. And then the, hopefully hard to see, control enclosures in the top right. Within the top right photo, which is at time of planting, the bottom right is at 10-year growth. What you're seeing there is the planted buffer that is also under construction with the facility. The reason why we choose this photo is this entrance, the exit out, right only out, is the most visible those control enclosures will be from the road, which is Auburn Farms Road. Also wanted to talk about the special exception for parking reduction. Strictly speaking, we're not trying to eliminate any parking spaces on site. We were approved under the old revised 93 ordinance, but since after approval, the new 2020 ordinance was adopted, we had to have the site considered under the 2023 ordinance. We're basically trying to stick with the parking that was originally approved and constructed for this project. We did plan these spaces pretty carefully. We have a full-time maximum growth of up to 50 full-time employees on this site. We don't anticipate any further expansion or growth because frankly, we're out of room. The site is bound to the right by the transmission lines you can see. to the left of the Auburn Farm Road, which will actually be expanded, and we have a right-of-way dedication reservation integrated into the approved site plan. To the south, the Risker, which was just discussed, broad run, and to the north, the adjacent property, but did want to hit that in a little bit more detail. So there is no disturbance and disturbance proposed with this application. It's just utilizing the previously approved and currently constructing paved area for these control enclosure storage. So we maintain our open space requirement. So this application does not alter the open space or FAR in any way. It does not cut down any trees or propose any kind of deforestation. So we preserve all specimen trees currently on site. In addition to that, there was also a, hold on one second, a reforestation plan that will integrate into the south of the site in compliance with staff recommendations. Since this is a storage of the control enclosures, it also means no additional traffic impacts or impacts to adjacent infrastructure. Another question was asked about the buffers and setbacks. Once again, we won't need to impact those at all because we're not proposing any new development and any new limits of disturbance. But just to reiterate what is provided, we have the 20-foot Type 3 buffer on the west along the road, the 25 Type C buffer, from the other property lines to the east, to the north, we have landscaping that we are maintaining with a conservation easement, and then to the south, the conservative open space associated with Bull Run. So in summary, those are the two special exceptions we're hoping to move forward with approval on. And one thing we did want to emphasize is that as the electric grid grows, so does the demand for control panels. The upgrade of electric facilities in Northern Virginia and in Loudoun County is crucial to meet the area's need for safe and reliable network. So thank you for your support and partnership in enhancing the resiliency and efficiency for our utility services.

All right, questions for the applicant? Commissioner Barnes?

Yes, would you explain to me what is panel wiring? I know what the panels are. I know you wire them. What purpose you do that? Why?

So what the panel wiring shop does is it takes the panels that go inside these control enclosures and assembles them, puts them into the control enclosures, and then those are actually delivered to substations. So it provides us the ability to operate those substations in most cases remotely.

Okay, I got it. Thank you. Commissioner Jasper.

It's just curious to me. So if you were building the panels and putting them in the control enclosures all along, was it just an oversight that you didn't realize you'd need to put the control enclosures here when you came through for the commission permit?

Well, it was an oversight, but it's certainly a goal for the capacity of the facility because there's only so much room in the panel wiring shop to accommodate these control enclosures. They're up to 50 feet long. We have specialized architecture that is specifically designed for the assembly of these things, but you can only store so many. So by staging them outside and the way we're proposing to do it greatly increases our capacity.

And how frequently will they move in and out of the facility?

That varies. I know we're planning on up to eight about at a time.

I think if memory serves, we're looking at 54 of these per year. So they won't be sitting out in storage for long. They'll be moving out, as well as the empty ones coming in, being staged, getting ready to go inside the building.

And at any one time, how many will be on the site? I know further down the road when everything's grown out, supposedly, they'll be less visible. But at this point, how many will be on the site at any given time?

We're planning on about eight. incoming and outgoing sitting in the outdoor storage area.

Okay. Those were my questions. Thank you. Mr. Banks?

Oh, okay.

You made sort of an offhand comment that caught my interest about Auburn Farm Road right away. Do you know, is there any planned improvements?

I know that it's in a long-term planning document, the name of which escapes me, but I don't know the date. Okay. North Star. North Star, that's right. North Star Boulevard.

There is, well, it's... So for those that don't drive, in fact I drove down there Friday because I was going down to Richmond and 95 was a mess so it took me the back way. And since North Star was completed, this is now a primary route that it will take you. And you hit a one car at a time bridge just past your facility, so I thought maybe you knew something that was gonna fix that. But that's regardless of this. You made that comment, so it kind of perked my interest. I was just wondering if you knew something. All right. We will go ahead and open up the public hearing on this item. I don't have anybody scheduled to speak. Is there anybody in the room who would like to speak to this application? Nope, we'll close the public hearing. This is in Little River District. So I'll go to Commissioner Jasper for a motion.

Thank you. I move that the Planning Commission forward LEGI 2025-0026 Loudoun Panel Wiring Shop, specs 2025-0049 and specs 2025-0138 to the Board of Supervisors with a recommendation of approval subject to the conditions of approval dated March 31, 2026, and based on the findings for approval provided as attachments one and two to the June 23, 2026 Planning Commission Public Hearing Staff Report.

Second. A motion made by Commissioner Jasper, seconded by Commissioner Barnes. Commissioner Jasper, do you have an opening?

I do. For Dominion, and I know some of you have sat here before, we are often faced and understand the power demands that are facing Dominion and Loudoun County This is an area transition area the transition large lot neighborhood there are already two substations in this area and now the panel wiring shop in what is predominantly a residential kind of agricultural area with sensitive environmental the risker and and the the bull run so The reason I raised that is because I think we have gotten more careful about the appearance of these facilities, whether they be substations or industrial-type facilities that are now needed to serve the electric grid. And I think we might have been, had we had another year plus of doing with this, we might have been more careful or more critical of the buffers and the image from Ashburn Farm Road. I'm recommending that we approve this application, but I just want to put it out there for the future that I think there may be improvements as we look at these kinds of facilities that diminish the impact on the neighborhoods and the local environmental resources going forward.

Anybody else? No? Closing? All right, so we have a motion to approve the application all those in favor say aye aye Opposed that motion will pass 9-0. Thank you very much And lastly we have leggy 2023-81 Dulles landing south ZMap 2023-9 Zmod 2023-43 and Zmod 2024-2

All right, and last but not least, good evening. My name is Matt Kessler with the Department of Planning and Zoning here to present this application for Dulles Landing South. As of 5 p.m. today, staff has not received any public comments. The subject property is located within the Dulles Selection District, north of Route 50, west of Loudoun County Parkway, and on either side of Dulles Landing Drive. The site consists of 18.67 acres of vacant land and zoned planned development commercial center regional center under the revised 1993 zoning ordinance. The proposal requests to rezone the site from the current PDCCRC zoning district to the planned development industrial park or PDIP zoning district for the development of up to 250,000 square feet of industrial uses, including data center and flex industrial. The proposal also requests two zoning modification requests. The first is to reduce the required type B buffer along the Northern property line from 20 feet to 10 feet. The second is to reduce the minimum PDIP zoning district size from 20 acres to 18.67 acres. This annotated concept development plan shows the general location of the permitted uses along with the location of social gathering areas, pollinator meadow and buffers. The reduced type B buffer can be seen along the top of the property. The proposal also includes an alternate concept development plan showing another development option. This sheet shows the specific location of three data center and flex industrial use buildings. The proposal proffers that no more than 50% of any single building consists of data center and that no more than 50% may consist of flex industrial use. These proffers do not preclude a building from consisting of half data center and half flex industrial, however. The proposal also proffers out a number of permitted PDIP uses. Shown here is table three from the staff report showing the list of permitted uses per the proposed proffer statement. Highlighted in yellow are the uses that are generally inconsistent with the suburban mixed use place type that this site is subject to. The property is subject to a ZMAP from 2007 for the Dulles Landing Shopping Mall, which rezone the property as well as approximately 61 additional acres to the current PDCCRC district. This approval allotted approximately 150,000 square feet of retail and community serving commercial uses to the subject property. Shown here is a sheet from the approved CDP for the Dulles Landing ZMap depicting what was envisioned for this particular site. This location is referred to as the marketplace and was intended to provide a cluster of smaller buildings around the public plaza with water feature to create a pedestrian oriented streetscape. This serves as a gateway into both the Dulles Landing Center as well as the Route 50 corridor. This vicinity map highlights a mix of existing and approved uses in the area surrounding the subject property for some additional context. Properties highlighted in blue indicate commercial and office uses, properties in green represent residential uses, and properties in orange show industrial sites. It should be noted that while the sites directly to the east and west of the subject property have approved site plans for industrial uses, both of these were by right approvals that were not subject to a legislative process. Shown here is an electrical infrastructure map identifying existing and proposed substations within a one mile radius of the property, as well as the location of major power lines. There was a recent board BMI requesting this information for all data center applications and will therefore be included with all future applications as well. The subject property is located within the suburban mixed use place type as I mentioned, which anticipates a compact pedestrian oriented environment that consists of a vertical mix of residential, commercial and recreational uses. Further, the SMU place type does not anticipate the uses that would be permitted by the proposed PDIP zoning district as discussed previously. Staff has identified two outstanding issues related to land use and compatibility and design for the proposal. The SMU place type supports a combination of uses ranging from residential to commercial that would attract residents from neighboring communities. While it is true that residential units are not permitted at the site due to the airport impact overlay district, the place type anticipates that not all sites may develop with residential uses. The preferred mix of uses allows for up to 95% non-residential uses with the remaining 5% allocated to public and civic spaces. The proposal proffers out a list of uses as previously discussed. However, the uses left to be permitted by right are still not anticipated in the SMU place type as core complimentary or conditional. Staff cannot support this inconsistency with the place type. The SMU place type also should provide compact pedestrian oriented environments with non-residential uses that support and blend with surrounding adjacent neighborhoods. The proposed site design remains industrially oriented and such uses are not anticipated to draw significant pedestrian traffic from surrounding residential neighborhoods. The site layout includes three long uninterrupted building facades with significant portion of the site dedicated to vehicular circulation and motor courts necessary for the proposed uses. It should also be noted that while the proposal includes landscape buffers, the general plan clarifies in its definitions that open space is not intended to be considered as leftover unplanned space, including buffers. Staff recommends site design be revised to better align with the development patterns anticipated by the place type. For these reasons, staff recommends the Planning Commission forward the applications to the Board of Supervisors with a recommendation of denial based on the findings for denial. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you.

All right, questions for staff? Vice Chair Maduretti?

Thank you.

Your light's on.

So I keep hearing the data center. In my conversation with an applicant, They're saying it's technically a data center, it's not a data center. What kind of a clarification they provided in their, in terms, is this application any different from a typical data center that has a substation and a lot of other things that go with the data center?

So the zoning ordinance doesn't distinguish in this instance that there's no multiple uses for data center. So regardless of the size, what's being proposed here as a data center and would be applicable to the same regulations as any other data center use.

So what I would note is kind of unique is that this application is proposing that the data center portion of the use, they're proposing share space with another type of use. Typical applications that we've seen for data center applications, the entire building is dedicated to the data center use and that entire site, and this is kind of a blended site.

Thank you.

Commissioner Jasper?

So my first question is about housing. So housing is absolutely no, I mean, no longer permissible there because of the airport overlay contours. Has the county ever kind of, I mean- So housing is absolutely- Sorry. Has the county ever considered, you know, in various places where there is need for housing, and people are kind of developing every inch, there's double and triple glazed windows, especially in multifamily housing that can go right on top of, you know, major infrastructure like railroads or whatever, but the county's never considered any flexibility for providing housing in the 65 LDN or whatever with mitigation in terms of construction approach?

I do think that that came up a lot when the county changed the kind of boundaries of the airport impact overlay district just a few years ago. What I can offer is that, yeah, in the 65 plus area, residential is prohibited. It is in the kind of intermediary area that those kind of mitigation measures with window treatments and other acoustical treatments are also required in that median area. but as it is today, no, the 65 plus completely prohibits residential.

Okay, and this is 65 plus, okay. I think that was my biggest question. Oh, and this may be better directed to the applicant, but does staff know whether the applicant has got a source for power for the data centers?

I will defer to the applicant on that.

All right, thank you.

Commissioner Combs.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to transportation, do we have any of the same issue that we saw with Foxgate application earlier tonight regarding the access to limited access Route 50?

So I believe DTCI is on the call and available, but I will say that the project is proffering to actually remove the ingress from Route 50 in coordination with the nearby intersection upgrade that is being done by DTCI. And I know they're on the call and can speak to that as well.

Okay, thanks.

Or are you waiting for GCI? I'm waiting for it. Okay.

Rory?

DTCI.

Is she there? I believe it's Rory or Enrique. Yes, I'm here. Well, that's something that definitely the applicant will have to close that entrance when we do the interchange on 50 and Loudoun County.

When is that interchange? proposed to be constructed relative to the timing for this application?

I don't have that information with me right now.

What I can offer is that the applicant is proposing to remove the access point that currently exists on 50. So that does satisfy the policies and the zoning ordinance regulations that were at discussion with Foxgate. And then with respect to the interchange, I know the county is working on designs for that interchange right now, but I don't know that there's an exact timeline identified at this time.

Okay, I'm sure the applicant may have additional detail. Thank you. Commissioner Myers.

Yeah, and getting back to the data center, what's the height limitation that they've agreed to on this development?

They've proffered a maximum height of 35 feet.

So I think that's important to point out because whether it's a data center or whatever it is, it's not your typical three, four, five story building that we're used to when you're talking about data centers. It's more like, which a lot of people may not even realize they are. There's quote unquote data centers on Noakes Boulevard that people don't realize are data centers unless they look beyond the trees to see the black fence. So it's a different type of user or battery chargers, I'm gonna call them, that go into these that don't require the same amount of energy that we see on a full-blown data center. So they usually are very different in the, they don't create a lot of noise and they don't create a lot of times a lot of energy because of the use that they are, as I call them, they're almost like a battery charger, I would call them. because the use is so small. On your slide six, are you saying the yellow and highlights are things that you don't support or they're things you do support?

I'll pull it up now. Okay, so I was saying that the uses highlighted in yellow are generally inconsistent. And I want to caveat that obviously design of those uses could play a lot into consistency with the place type. So while these are uses that are generally inconsistent, of course, you know, the design height restrictions, how it integrates to the surrounding community could also be factors as well.

And that's what concerns me because we've said, you've kind of made the presumption that they're not compatible when they actually may be compatible. When we look at the limitation of the 35 feet in height, we look at there's only can be 50%. You know, to me, then that doesn't necessarily mean that a data center under this pretense would be something that we would say couldn't go. Same thing with flex industrial use. You've kind of made it just a blanket can't, no can do without looking at what are those different uses that come into the flex. You know, I went, I spent the last two weeks going through and most of them, I'll be honest, were your developments because wanted to see all the brick. And in that area, I mean, We have dance studios, we have karate facilities, those smaller uses that I could see, I wouldn't see any reason why they couldn't be in here as actually a supplement to that retail that's in the back. Because to me, they're not competing uses, they're accessory to the other use. So to me, it's like we made these blanket statements that they don't fit without really looking at why wouldn't they fit.

So also earlier tonight, we talked about the suburban mixed use place type that anticipates the vertically integrated design with residential and commercial. A big portion of that is what would be applicable for this site is the commercial piece of that. Suburban mixed use, is the overall vision, but there are different zoning districts that might implement that. And to your point, Commissioner Myers, there are some uses permitted in the IP zoning districts that are commercial in nature, like karate studios and other things that could be compatible. It's just that there are other industrial uses also permitted in IP that would not be compatible with the suburban mix.

And I guess what I'd like to just see is more of a condensing of what are those instead of a blanket, it's no flex. because and the other thing is, they've already agreed that they're not going more than 35 feet. So you can't do vertical. I mean, unless we're gonna go underground and keep it at 35, I mean, we've already lost that. And this, to me, how can they be a suburban mix when there's no residential that's even allowed? So I see my time's up because of our discussion, but I had other questions. I'm pretty sure this is gonna go to a work session, hopefully, so.

Yeah. Anybody else? Can you go back up to the, it's probably the second slide that shows the site? Yeah, that one. So you've got, can you explain if anything is proposed or already approved for the undeveloped sites on either side of this?

Yes, I believe there are two site plans approved for on either side, both for I wanna say flex industrial uses, but I know that the applicant goes into more information on that as well.

The one to the northwest is for warehouse uses and then the one to the southeast is for flex uses. The ones to the south are for mixed use developments. The Avonlea too is noted there and Cedar Terrace is south riding.

I didn't see it. What's the square footage? How many hundreds of thousands of square feet of space are they requesting with these three buildings or two buildings or maybe one big building? Is there a number or not? On the subject property?

Yes. 250,000 would be the maximum that they've proffered.

that's the total amount of square footage they could build. Correct. So if they did one giant building, it could be 125,000 of data center uses. If they did a 50, you know, whatever built number of building, each building cannot exceed more than 50% for the data center use. Cause that that's how that's going to be underserved. Okay. All right. Last chance for these staff. Then we will go to the applicant for presentation.

Send those chairs and the stand down.

Okay. Good evening, members of the commission. My name is Colleen Gillis. I'm an attorney with Curata Partners. And I say this a lot, like when I start my presentations, it's kind of my spiel. I'm excited to be here tonight on behalf of an applicant. I'm going to say it after all of the discussion of the board and the community and economic development and everything that we've heard over the last couple of years, I am really excited to be here tonight on behalf of St. John properties. If you paid attention at all to the discussion lately, the county continues to say we need a diversity of businesses in the county and St. John is the partner that the county has really been lucky to have all of these years to provide that space for new and diverse businesses to come and make Loudoun County their home. So, you already looked at this exhibit, obviously, so I won't belabor the point, but this is our site, 19 acres at the south side of Dulles Landing. The property history. This property was rezoned in 2007. Think back to 2007. Maybe it's your hair you think about, where you lived at that time, or where you did all of your shopping. It was in big box stores. It was in shopping malls. Where we shop today is just not the same. And so it was rezoned for another 150,000 square feet of retail on these three kind of land bays at the southern end of Dulles Landing. The world of retail has changed and it's been vacant for 19 years. I know on behalf of Beatty, we've been in front of you a couple of times asking for sign plan changes, for changes that would enhance and amplify the ability of retail to be successful here. And unfortunately, as we've done so, the retail market has continued to struggle. As we talked about earlier, just really quickly, we have agreed because it was a legacy proffer from that retail rezoning to eliminate the access off of Route 50 once that interchange is constructed. Based on the conversations that we've had with the Dulles District Office and DTCI on that project, that interchange is anticipated to open approximately 10 years from now, 2034, 2035. It'll be here before we know it. Most importantly, though, about retail, don't take my word for it, don't take Beatty's word for it, don't take St. John's word for it. The county completed its own retail corridor study analysis last year and determined that we are over retailed as a county. But specifically with this area, the study anticipates a retail oversupply of more than a quarter million square feet in 2035, which is why Beatty, as the developer of that retail, turned to St. John and thought that this was a great use in this location. So this is the view. Retail does not go away in this area just by the rezoning of this property. We use this because while yes, as identified earlier, we are flanked on east and west side by other industrial projects that are buy right and approved. The reality is that we've got a number of retail projects that are all around us. Cedar Terrace, which is under construction and Earth is moving there. The Target, which opened about nine months ago. You've got additional retailers that have been announced in our COLA shops. We like to think, because we were in front of you five years ago, the Planning Commission five years ago, we like to think that what we will provide at this flex project is provide the bodies and the jobs and the daytime traffic to support all of that retail. Part of the reason why retail struggles is because they don't have that lunchtime daytime traffic and the reason why we think that Target and other retailers have declared their intention to open in Arcola is because of the development of Arcola Tech. 100% least of the four buildings that we've delivered so far we know that there's a demand. We know that this is a really good opportunity for us and the county. So obviously with regard to With regard to suburban mixed use, this is the primary conflict of this application. And as Commissioner Jasper pointed out, you know, the AIOD and the imposition of the 65 LDN here is what creates the inability for us to really deliver on that mix of uses. Now, one of the things that I do want to point out is that when staff is talking about it's not drawing people into this, we like to think of our project as sending people out. The moms, the dads who come and drop their kids off for dance lessons or karate lessons or whatever, they're the foot traffic out that go and support the Michaels, the Dicks, the Walmart, the Target, all of that. We like to think of that connection being possible and maybe they're not gonna walk there. They will walk to the ones in Dulles Landing. Maybe they'll get in the car to drive to the ones at Arcola. I won't belabor this is the changes to the 65 LDN. and then staff already used an image very similar to this on either side of us east and west it's already industrial we like to think that we're creating this corridor here for for additional industrial and i should emphasize it's not heavy industrial it's flex and this this article just from a couple of months ago from the blue ridge leader in loudon today really emphasizes the need for well-planned flex space we think we need it we think that this is the right place to do it and we're pleased to be bringing it to you tonight. This is a quote from Buddy Riser, the Director of Economic Development, also emphasizing that need for this type of product and how it really does provide for those new and burgeoning and developing and growing businesses in Loudoun County. So what is our proposal? This is our illustrative. It proposes three buildings, classic St. John property architecture, all brick buildings. And we've located these buildings and cited these buildings in such a way so that back of house and those truck courts face one another, or in the case of the building to our west, it faces the truck court of the industrial development to our west. If you haven't been, as some of you have, I know some of you have gone and visited St. John product, you probably have driven by it and not even known it because St. John really prides itself on an all brick, high quality building. As Matt Holbrook, who's here with me this evening, would tell you is that they build these buildings to be there for 50 years. St. John has been a successful flex builder for 50 plus years. They don't want to create a building that in 10, 15, 25 years, they've got to go in, reskin, or worse yet, completely rebuild. These are buildings that are built to last. We're built for quality. We're built for long term. We've done a little bit of talking about this data center concept. This is what I would like to say. It's not a definition in the ordinance, but this is a micro data center. These are to provide for the opportunity for a tenant to say, hey, listen, the sensitivity of our files, we need to be able to access them every single day. We want to put our servers and our racks in the suite next door to us. This is not the data centers that you see on Waxpool and Loudoun County Parkway. And as proof of that, in addition to what Commissioner Meyer said earlier, We have committed that no more than 50% of any of one of our buildings would be a data center and no more than 50% of the entire project could be a data center. And most importantly, no security fencing, no external facing generators or external cooling equipment. To the average passerby, it's gonna look like it could be an office in there or it could be one of our other tenants. They're not going to be able to tell that it's a data center. And to your question, Commissioner Jasper, they are so small that we are not asking for a substation. We've proffered out substations on the property as well. This is not like that. This mirrors the Arcola Center proffers. We use those as our guide in drafting these proffers, thinking that we would work from what was successful five years ago and go from there. So let's talk about this space. We think of flex space as quasi retail, right? There's a reason why Beatty picked us and picked St. John to be the tenant here, to be the purchaser here. It's because this is complimentary without being directly competitive to the retail within Dulles Landing. And so these are just some of the examples of some of our tenants, a soccer academy, a small school, a dance facility. This is SR Coffee, which has retail locations in Ashburn Farm and other locations. I think of this as a retail location more than it is industrial in that fashion. This is a great use for this space because it does, and we go back to production, they could be doing roasting of beans in this facility. but it could also be another user just like this that might be assembling something else for their small business that they were currently doing or they're formerly doing in their garage or their attic or their spare bedroom and now they're moving into a proper space. So when we start to talk about those other uses that we're trying to keep in here, it's to support those small growing businesses. It's not to come in here and go, you know what, we're gonna smelt some things and build massive manufacturing facilities in this environment. Another one is, again, that school. This is a creative use of the truck court behind it. I would challenge any of you, if you got dropped into the area on the right side of the slide, not knowing where you were, to know that you were anywhere like a flex industrial park, but this is what St. John's creativity does to land these great tenants and to provide a needed resource to Loudoun County residents. Another one, swim school, right? This is a great place for a swim school or perhaps a burn boot camp. These are those types of tenants that we need as Loudoun County residents, but aren't necessarily capable from a revenue perspective to pay top dollar for retail, but they're really needed in our community. With regard to open space, I won't belabor this point. I know I'm running out of time, but staff's concern is that there's not enough open space. I want to point out that that is a general plan evaluation of this. When you look at the ordinance, we have no outstanding issue with the provision of open space as determined by the ordinance. And by our calculation, we're at 25% open space. We can talk about that. We're happy to talk about that with staff if this goes to work session and get more refined on that. Our design, we think, is top quality. You know what this is. These are some of the commitments we're making to design 25% open space, seven social gathering areas, pollinator plannings, et cetera. Almost at the end here, these are our seven social gathering areas. These are intentional. They are not intended to meet a plan policy or anything like that. These are literally to support the tenants and the people that come to our parks. seven social gathering areas. This is where somebody can go and sit and take a call while their kid is in that dance lesson or swim lesson. But they're also used by the folks who are tenants in the building and going out and grabbing lunch or taking a walk around the park. We know this because the folks here at the table who work for St. John, office in St. John Parks, they know how they're used and they know that these will be beneficial. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Questions for the applicant? Mr. Jasper.

So I expect that we are going to work session. I don't want to belabor the point, but I do want to raise this. So I poked around a little bit. What worries me about this is in the proffers, there's 50% potential for warehouse, 50% could be a distribution facility, and 50% can be data centers. If I look around on the web and say how much room, physical space is required, how many for moderate business, like 25 to 100 people, and then you look and it says, okay, it's 10 terabytes, and doing it in the cloud is zero, but if you want the security of doing it in your place, it's the size of a book. So the 50%... proffer for space for a data center is something I'm going to really want to understand how a swim school possibly needs that much space for their data.

Well, for sure, it's not a swim school. Okay. That's a component of our tenant base. And I could defer to Matt Holbrook of St. John to talk about the diversity of the sorts of tenants that are in there. The swim school does not need the data.

And... moving forward understanding that this is not going to be 50 percent because under the proffers now it could be 50 percent data center and 50 percent distribution facility which be a nightmare in this space so we hadn't looked at it that way and we will definitely evaluate we our intention for sure is not to do 50 warehouse and 50 that's not how st john's business model works but we will look at that between now and the work session but matt do you want to speak to

Yeah, so thank you again for your consideration. Again, my name is Matt Holbrook with St. John Properties. So I think when you think about us as the applicant, there are a couple things that separate us from others, which is we own our buildings forever. We've been doing this for 55 years. We still own the buildings we first built. And we've been a known entity in Loudoun County for 25 years. So I would encourage everyone to go and check out our buildings. You'll see exactly what we build. When it comes to the data center requirement or the warehouse component, the users that we think of as warehouse or industrial, they honestly can't afford our buildings. Our buildings are shorter in height. The column spacing doesn't work. They've got too much brick, too much glass. They're often sustainable, so the costs there go up. They're not designed. They're shallow buildings. They're not deep buildings. The truck coordinates aren't set up for that. So they're really, they're not designed to be warehouse buildings. And you'll see that when you go around our parks, we don't have those uses. We don't allow trucks to stay overnight. We have all these sort of property management requirements because we are a spec builder and we build these buildings, we own them forever and we have to lease them. And so we have to make sure these parks look as great the first day as they do the last day. And so we're always managing and monitoring and thinking of adjacencies so that we can lease out the next available space. And again, because we own these things forever, we have to be thinking generation six and seven and eight down the road. With regard to the micro data center piece, I would again just say they're in our buildings. So if you can't find them, that's because they're not really, there's no tell. So they don't have the overhead power lines. They don't have the massive cooling. They don't have the, the normal things that go with data centers, they're honestly, St. John properties has a disaster recovery facility that's separate from our office buildings that are our uses. It's a 6,000 square foot facility in an undisclosed location. And it's where we back up our own stuff because the cloud's great, but we like to have control of our own data. So that's what it is. Honestly, it works out beautifully in the mix of a multi-tenanted park because there's no parking demand for those. so it actually is it pays the rent it provides a use there's no really significantly upgraded power so like the the transformers that we set for our normal buildings we do about 200 amps per 3 000 square foot bay the the i can think of the couple that we have in place they might need 400 amps that is so far different than megawatts i mean that is a drug But I hear you. I understand the concern.

I'll be a dog with a bone on this. Not because I'm concerned about that use necessarily, but also the displacement of other uses.

Mr. Barnes. Yes. You were showing the picture of three buildings. So what are you going to do with the other two buildings? I know one is going to be data center. That's what you said.

No, we're going to build three St. John buildings. We're going to build three St. John buildings and we are going to lease them to tenants that need that space. There may be zero data center in there. There may be 50 tenants in there. There might be 10 tenants in there, but they are tenants that are all permitted within our proffers.

You're going to proffer our data center?

No, so what we've been talking about is that we are limiting data center uses to things that can be, that because they are the storage of data within a building, they constitute a data center, but they are not data center in the way that we think of a data center. They are rooms. Think back to the early 2000s when we would think a data center, we thought of a closet or a small space in an office building. We want to preserve the ability to do those. We are not asking to do it. How many of those are you going to build? We're not building them. They would put their servers and racks into a suite space that's already constructed.

How many of those are you thinking about? I thought it was just going to be one on one corner, but are they going to be more than one?

So what we have said is that no more than 50% of any single building and no more than 50% of the overall project could be data center. Just to give us the flexibility.

You're talking about it could be all three of them have 50% of the data center.

Yes, and we have had conversations with some of your colleagues so far about looking at whether or not that's the right percentage. That was the percentage that the board approved five years ago at our COLA center.

How can you be showing me the swimming places with a data center in the same building? The kids are swimming in there with a data center. That doesn't go very well.

So they would be in separate suites. They're not swimming right next to the servers and the racks. That would be a different tenant within the building.

That doesn't look right. Anyway, thank you.

Mr. Gomes.

Did you want to respond? You still had some time. Just really briefly, I would say, again, this is the exact same language that we worked on really hard in the last application to find something that worked for everyone with regard to this because we are definitely not what everyone's normal definition of a data center is. I wish there was another term. network operating center, disaster recovery, anything but that horrible phrase that makes everyone's hair stand up on the back of their neck. So that's not what we're talking about. But I would say for Arcola Center, it is the exact same language. We've built and delivered four buildings there, which is right across the street. There's no data center uses in there. It is 49% pseudo retail uses and 51% commercial uses, traditional employment uses. So our ability to do this doesn't mean it's going to happen it just gives us the flexibility that we can have these disaster recovery facilities or something like them whatever that's defined like in the future in our buildings okay commissioner combs

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the problem is, as you just said, Matt, it's a loaded term, right? This works well at Arcola. And I have no doubt that you all can pull it off virtually anywhere. You're going to build the St. John's property. But this is a different corridor. This is Route 50, right? This is the primary east-west thoroughfare. And putting the Arcola with a perhaps 50% data center just feels different. And I think the challenge as this moves forward is going to be to, right? You deal with this in law school, like the word contract, right? It's just, it's a loaded term. This data center is a loaded term. It needs a different definition, I think, for your use. And I think that mitigates a lot of the risk that perhaps a lot of us are feeling that let's say you've decided to flip out of this and then there's this 50% data center use that's out there. That's a little more concerning on this corridor, I think more so than it is at Arcola. So I think that's something that I'm sensitive to. I think I'm hearing that from others as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, not in the moment, but as this perhaps

Yeah, no, we can definitely, we have already started the conversation of thinking about how we can change it. I mean, we unfortunately can't get away from the definition of a data center because that's how it's defined in the zoning ordinance. But we did try to say it's not data center like we think about it because it's not going to have external generators. It's not going to have cooling equipment, all those. There are probably other things that we can add to that.

Commissioner Miller. Thank you. Over the 55 years that St. John's has been building buildings, with the exception of a handful of office buildings and some of your properties and some gas stations here and there, the vast majority of the buildings you construct are internally 18 feet high. much to the chagrin of many people in the commercial real estate industry. You will only build 18 foot high buildings. And when you add in a parapet and things above the roof, maybe you get to 23, 24, 25 feet for any particular flex industrial building. This particular application has proffered to have building heights of no more than 35 feet. 35 feet is also the height of the original group of data centers that were one-story data centers. If these buildings were proffered to be the height that you need a St. John's flex building to be, which would be significantly less than 35 feet, perhaps that's one way to mitigate the concern that some have over thinking this would be one day be a data center. Because if you did flip out of something, a project like this and the worst data center in there, there ain't no enterprise user is gonna go build 42,000 square feet at 18 feet high for a data center. Something to consider.

That's all, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's kind of fair for both applicant as well as for the staff. So I know St. John's property has this distinct look with the brick buildings and a single story but again depending on where these buildings are going to be built i think we got to think about some some changes do i know what exactly those changes are going to be i don't know yet but i think this is going to be part of the dallas landing shopping plaza so we got to do some some changes i don't know what they are but I think we do need to work on some kind of a design changes here so that that blends in with what we currently have in there. With that said, question for staff. I think I heard some comments, I don't know when I heard it, but in terms of you guys have some concerns about the orientation of the buildings. I want to understand it better so that we can talk about this.

Sure. So I think generally staff would recommend more information about the site. So kind of what the orientation of the sites are. I know some of those brick designs would be things that staff would look for as part of the commitments to ensure the kind of architectural design. But there's generally other site features, open space, the use of motor courts, as it's been mentioned, and other specifics that we would look for as we go to a work session.

Do you have any specific recommendations how they should be oriented right now?

specific to the orientation. I don't know that I have a specific answer at this moment. I could speak to the buildings as a whole, but specific to orientation, I don't think I have.

We can work on those things. I do want to understand, for example, in the picture you are showing on the screen, for example, that ingress that is going to come out of 50, right? That's going to go right between those buildings there. I mean, how many years is that going to stay in there? I mean, is it the next 10 years, 15 years, or the next three years? I mean, it just feels incomplete for me with the full information there. Because not knowing when the road is going to be closed, is it going to be like an open corridor going into Walmart, or is it going to be a dead end with some kind of land features that show up on the 50? I cannot really foresee how this is going to look like. Again, I mean, some of these concerns are the design oriented. Like I said, I mean, these buildings, I understand where you're coming from, Matt, for example, but I think it still needs to blend in. It cannot have that distinct look that fit everywhere else. If it's built on a separate land base somewhere else, it would have been different, but this is going to be part of this whole Dulles Landing Plaza right now, so thank you.

Mr. Frank.

Okay, question for you and I didn't register with this until this evening as we're staring at this but we have two alternative, we have an alternative CDP. Why do we have one that's just the one big blob?

Well, because in order for us to preserve the right to do data center, we have to show building orientations. There will be a decision that St. John will have to make. If our CDP is not specific, If our CDP is not specific or it doesn't match those locations that we've given ourselves the flexibility to do data in there, then we will lose the ability to do that at any point. This is how the county has interpreted the application of the changes to the zoning ordinance that made data center a special exception use. The CDP that gives us some flexibility, at some point St. John will have to make a decision. Do I follow the building orientation for the data centers? Now we're really into the weeds of like, making decisions at site plan. I'm going to make a decision as to whether I build exactly what is shown on the CDP for one or all of those buildings to preserve my right to do data center in all or some of those buildings. Or do I make a decision that I want a slightly different building or like building length, building mirror, whatever the case may be. I want to shift one of those other buildings, but in so doing, I will lose the ability if it doesn't match the CDP sheet for data center. St. John will lose the ability to do data center in that.

So is there any scenario where one big building gets built?

No.

Not just because that's not what St. John does, but is it possible, maybe that's a staff question, that one big building gets built? Yes. Okay. That's another issue that goes towards the height issue that would be very reassuring because one big building starts to look a lot more attractive to what we all just said we don't really...

we're happy to commit to it not being one big building.

Yeah, I mean, I get that, you know, you might need to take 10 feet off one building and add five feet to another. Okay, that's, or shift one a couple feet. That's fine. You know, three very St. John-esque proper buildings is not my hesitation. It's one big building that 35 feet, it starts to feel awful familiar to things we- For whatever it's worth.

We could not do one big building as a data center because it is the data center sheet that shows the three specific buildings. So just to be clear, there is no intention here to be like, oh, we're getting this ability to do one big building. The data center plan is specific as to those footprints, those three building footprints.

So even with the 50% limitation, that's the only way you can do even up to that 50% would be that, okay.

In that three building configuration.

I think we still, there's some things here that we'd all, yeah, like to see ironed out to feel a little reassured. And then, okay. Yeah, I mean, less than 50% would be nice. And then because I couldn't, I have to pick on everybody equally. I hate buffer reductions these days. Like I hate them with a passion. Great. Find me somewhere to plant some more trees or make up for it and do something somewhere, please. So let me just share this. Can we? Because you asked, we're eliminating it.

Actually, we've realized we didn't need it in the last couple of weeks. We couldn't update the application to show that. Nevertheless, we are enhancing that buffer in that location, but we are not asking for a buffer reduction. Thank you.

I appreciate that. I'm asking everybody who insists they don't need a buffer somewhere to make up for it somewhere else these days. So that was all my questions.

Commissioner Myers.

So in your application, you are agreeing to eliminate the Route 50 access?

Yeah, that was a legacy proffer from the Dulles Landing retail rezoning and staff does not see a scenario in which we would ever get an exception to get a write-in off of Route 50 to continue after the construction of the interchange because this property and the property to the east, which St. John already owns, will both have to give right-of-way for that interchange if the design works out to be as they are currently proposing it.

But until that happens, you are going to have an access.

You got it. Because we've been in these conversations about that 10% design of the interchange that the Board of Supervisors just endorsed within the last couple of months. Because we've been in those conversations, we have had conversations with DTCI staff on the capital projects front, and they're anticipating that construction will start in the early 2030s and complete in 2034.

Okay, so definitely when we go to work session, I'd like to understand the timing possibility, the realistic timing we're talking about that going away and then also the construction of your buildings because to me that also changes the focus of what I feel like is the front and the back of buildings because if that goes away, really this becomes an offset to the walmart and all that's in there it's it's not a frontage on ralph now i'm not saying that we don't want it to look nice on the but you're all brick to begin with but i'm just saying then all like you've already talked about most your internal stuff will be internal but it's not then the quarter that's coming in that people are driving into to get to the retail part so to me that that really changes the dynamics so i would definitely like to understand that when we go to work session and then the other thing is i'd like to see if there's a a decrease in percentage that you could agree to as far as it gets to the maximum of a data center because I think like the concern would be we want to make sure that we are saving some space for those smaller units like the swim centers and those type of things that they can be complimentary. So maybe it could be a breakup not only of that but also the maximum of warehousing that you're looking at so that it allows more flexibility for those smaller users that they're not competing against the guy that wants the $40,000 and the $10,000 guy can't fight with him. So I'd like to have a discussion about that too when we go to work session. Understood. Okay.

Okay, so for myself, I'm very familiar with St. John Properties, and I'm kind of okay with the design look to match your typical, your projects. But you just mentioned the one, I guess, just south of this that didn't have any data center uses. I know you've got the project, along Loudoun County Parkway and Gloucester. You've got the one off of Waxpool and Red Rum. In fact, I was just in there last night enjoying one of my favorite beverages. Do you have any of these data center uses in any other of your buildings in Loudoun County? Yes. So Ashburn Tech has them, has two. Ashburn Tech. Okay.

I'm trying to think if there's any other ones. As an exclusive use, I don't think so. I mean, people obviously, tenants have racks and data rooms and things like that.

Do you have to get to a certain size before it just becomes your own servers for your business and it becomes data center? Is there some number?

My understanding, having done this before, I remember this from our conversations five years ago, is that it's not a size. There's no size limitation in the zoning ordinance. It has to do with when you go in there and get your certificate of occupancy, if they walk in there and it's only servers and racks, whether it's a thousand feet or 10,000 square feet, that's a data center. And so if, however, your certificate of occupancy is an office and you've got one of your sub offices that just got servers and racks in it, nobody's going to say, well, this is a data center because I'm going to just make it up. 70% of your space is office. But it's those circumstances in which you go, I've got, you know, it's 90% of my space is servers and racks with maybe somebody, you know, a working desk and some monitors there that that looks, feels, smells a lot more like a data center, even though we wouldn't necessarily, when we think data center, we think 100 foot tall buildings.

Yeah.

Okay, all right. So at some point I can reach out to you guys. I'd like to go, I don't know the privacy, you may not want me to see inside of it, but where you have these existing uses, I'd just be curious to see it. Okay, thanks. If nothing else, we can just peer in the glass. All right, so we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing for this item. We do have one person signed up to speak, Emily Johnson.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Emily Johnson on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. We ask you seriously, what industrial development is this applicant providing? Is it something we don't already have? The plans have labeled buildings flex industrial slash data center, which we all know to be very different uses, the latter of which we have an oversupply of. As it stands, the applicant could put forward an innovative blend of flex industrial suited to small businesses with local offices, dance and recording studios, a bakery, and gym. Or the applicant could construct manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping facilities with heavy truckload. Or the applicant could put in 125,000 square feet of data center, which is at least 25 micro data centers, or altogether a hyperscaler. Ultimately, it looks like we could get some unclear combination of these outcomes, but many of the uses the applicant keeps in their proposal, particularly the data center, would be inappropriate in this location. Why leave them in? This is the suburban mixed-use place type, the area of Dulles Landing, our COLA center in the Avonlea community along Route 50. While the applicant has emphasized their flex product, they're proposing many uses that staff finds may not be fully compatible with the existing commercial center and potentially less safe for pedestrians. Our comprehensive plan informed by extensive community input makes clear that this area should be a pedestrian-oriented environment. While the very close proximity to the airport and big box stores means more residential is not the answer here, a mix of commercial, entertainment, cultural, and recreational uses as envisioned would still be appropriate and serve nearby residents. What the place type does not encourage is 250,000 square feet of industrial consolidated in one or three buildings. The project also potentially locates more high-load energy users less than 10 minutes south of the site that will be served by the highly contentious Golden to Mars transmission line in which hundreds of residents in this area spoke out against the further industrialization of their community. Over and over, residents of this particular part of the county said they do not want any more data centers here. They spoke at the most publicized comment opportunity they had and it would be disingenuous to forget that. And it would also be irresponsible at this point in time to approve a potential data center without very clear commitments that they won't have backup generators or water intensive cooling mechanisms and so on. Unfortunately, amidst lots of possible options, the developer has not been clear tonight about the details of what they're thinking for this site and how these end users work together. Please don't avoid that specificity. We need to be clear, especially with mixed uses like this. As it stands, we're concerned this project may harm its neighbors and does not respect its place type. It doesn't even provide the minimum amount of open space. It also, as currently written, asks to reduce buffers to uses it is incompatible with and potentially, crucially, builds more data centers in Loudoun. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room wish to speak to this application? No. Anybody online? No. All right. Do you wish to respond to the comments? Any final words?

No, the only thing that I would clarify is that there is a significant demand for this product. The vacancy rates are exceptionally low. I know Matt can speak to that. This is not a speculative, despite the fact that we build speculative space, it is not a speculative endeavor. This is something that the business community, the future, the health of our economic development here in the county is relying and depending on. Do you wanna talk about the vacancy rates?

Yeah, so I would just say in normal commercial real estate, if a building is 95% full, it's considered full because there's a natural movement of tenants in and out of spec buildings. Our parks, just as one example, are more than 98% full. They're more than full right now. We have waiting lists for some of our projects in Loudoun County because people can't get space. And so there's absolutely a need, and I speak for us based on our data, but if you ask anyone else that does what we do, there's absolutely an absence of space. And so we're trying to figure out the right place for this. And so when we look for opportunities, like this is a great opportunity for us. It's next to like uses. It's next to something that we've already done. It's already proven to be successful. It's not in the transition policy area. It's not in the rural West. This is the right place for it. The retail, you know, I think we'd all love more retail. The challenge is, is that 25% of the trade area in this little geographic area is consumed by Dulles Airport and a quarry. No one is going to retail in that area. And so the retails there that struggled, we're the best closest thing. We're this pseudo retail that's employment opportunities and services and afterschool care. I was writing a list of some of our tenants, Lost Rhino, I'm not calling out any names, but Lost Rhino, Dominion Brewing, SR Coffee, we have schools, we have wrestling, we have home improvement showrooms, we have... places of worship. I was just sitting in the back and I realized, oh yeah, we have Arthur Murray, the dance school is one of our tenants. We are the right use to help complement all the existing retail that's there and bring in that daytime population. So I'm grateful. We're all grateful for your consideration to move us to work session.

We are mixed use.

Yeah, we are. We were just told we're mixed use.

All right. Thank you. So this is in the Dulles District. So I'm going to go to Vice Chair Moderelli for a motion.

Thank you, Chair. So I move the Planning Commission forward LEGI 2023-0081, Dallas Landing South, ZMAP 2023-0009, ZMAR 2023-0043, and ZMAR 2024-0002. Oh, wait. Can I just change it because I think I read the wrong one. I move the Planning Commission forward, Leggie 2023-0008, 8-1, Dallas Landing South, ZMAP 2023-0009, ZMAR 2023-0043, and ZMAR 2024-0002 to the Planning Commission work session for further discussion.

Second. Motion made by Vice Chair Maduretti, seconded by Commissioner Miller. Vice Chair Maduretti, you have an opening.

Yes, sir. Colin, I've been, by now you heard from all of us. I mean, pretty much we all concentrated on few issues that we have concerns with, so I don't want to repeat the whole thing again, but one thing, as much as possible, we would like to, especially now we establish the St. John's property has so much demand, people are waiting, it does contradict for us to say, you know what, we want 50% data center here. I mean, For the best application, I can completely proffer out this if that's not who you actually needed to fill these locations. But I don't know whether that's practically possible or not. But the thing is, I think that seems to be the biggest concern here, the data center, that whole thing. Again, apart from that, I mean, there are a few things that we need to work on the design side. And with those few things, I think we can get to some kind of a positive intent from our commission here. So thank you.

Commissioner Miller?

um thank you i would um the support certainly support the motion or work session i would just add that for these type of applications we don't usually have referrals from economic development so perhaps for our work session it might help us to have someone from economic development come out to speak to the nature of the use we hear from the applicant of course that can sometimes be self-serving but sometimes it helps to hear it from the county itself as to the need or the desire or the type of product. And so hopefully that can happen at our work session. Thank you.

Mr. Barnes. Yes, thank you. Since you're talking about that people are waiting to Mr. Marotti said that and people are waiting for their space. So you should be just happy to build just a space for them and not putting the data centers because you said they will be taken away right away. for your people to come down and move in. Why would you wanna put a data center if you can just rent it out like it is? And I don't like to see the data center there. And that's the thing, but I like to see it flex. So when you come back, I'd like to see data center is gone. Thank you. Mr. Jasper.

Thank you. When we come back, what I hope we can do is see proffers and have a conversation about what will be there and what the developer's willing to do regardless of the developer's track record. and history of development, I don't think that that winds up being enforceable and proper. And so I think having a more concrete enforceable conversation about how things are that doesn't depend on the applicant being the owner forever is would be really helpful to as a way to frame things.

Okay, anybody? Commissioner Myers. Yeah, I just want to make sure I brought up and want to make sure at the work session we get that where we look at the Route 50 and the timing of that closure. I also would like, I would like the staff to give us the information and I know Colleen presented a little bit hers, but those abutting properties that abut this property, I'd like us to know what was the legislative approval on them, because it's easy to tell us what the general plan says. I feel like every time there's a legislative act, we should do an amendment to the general, Chair Randall is going to kill me for the statement because I made it to her earlier and she said, don't you dare say it. So I'm going to say it. I feel like every time we do a legislative act that's against what the adopted general plan says, we should do a secondary motion that amends the general plan to say this now conforms when you approve this. You know, because it would eliminate a lot of hours of a lot of work because when you logistically look at what's around this, the general plan no longer makes any common sense as to why we would deny this application. And I'm not saying that to be disrespectful to staff. It's just reality versus the plan. And the way to correct that is every time we do a legislative act, we do a plan amendment. But knowing that that's not going to happen, during my lifetime, then we have to deal with what we've been given. And I think what we've been given is we need to see what is abutting on these properties, what are the uses on these properties, and what makes logical sense. So we know we've got the airport over here, we know what we can't do there. We know we have these two properties that abut this, what does it show they're gonna be, and we know what the Walmart is. And so I think that would give us a better flavor of what we're really looking at. And then again, looking at some kind of differential of the percentage of data centers. And then maybe part of the motion we have to do is an amendment to the zoning ordinance for a new definition. You know, that if you're underserved square feet and you're only so fit high, you're a battery charger, you're being facetious. But I'm just saying, I think we're to the point where, you know, there's got to be some differential made about what it is. It's not a data center that creates all of us going to the outhouse. But I'll look forward to going to work session.

Can I ask a clarifying question? Sure. Commissioner Myers, is your request to obtain that information for abutting only adjacent properties, or is there a vicinity or a radius that you'd like that information for? Just abutting. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Anybody else? All right, I'm good going to work session. I'm generally supportive of this type of use. We've got flex industrial to the left, flex industrial to the right, this part in the middle. It kind of makes sense. It would fill that in. I'm also kind of curious, and I think I know the answer, when the general plan came out calling the suburban mixed use, I think we were still using the old 65 contours, which meant this was appropriate. It was outside the 65. I have a feeling that if we were working with the new contours, we wouldn't have called the suburban mixed use. We would have called it something more like flex industrial, or it would be a different place type. So I think it's just, it got caught in, the progression of things hasn't changed. We called it a place type, the airport contours changed, which kind of made that place type really not viable here anymore, but nothing's been done to change it. I kind of think that's what happened here. So, yeah, I don't have any specific things. I think you've covered all what I think we need to deal with in work session. I don't think it's a far reach to get this from retail, which has struggled for 20-some years in the Route 50 corridor. We've all kind of watched it. And this whole area that had these glowing plans were phenomenal retail. It never transpired. And it's suddenly not going to transpire now, especially with the change in the airport, the contours. That's all I have to say. Vice Chair, Moderator, do you have a closing?

No, sir.

Okay. We have a motion to send this to work session. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will carry 9-0. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. That concludes our legislative agenda. Brian, you got some things to discuss? Yes, Mr. Chair. Don't pack up just yet.

A couple quick updates for you all. The first pertains to the Western Loudoun Rural Uses and Standards CPAM and ZOAM or Wild West Project that's actively ongoing. On June 2nd, the board approved an amendment to that project plan to replace the review by the Zoning Ordinance Committee with review by an ad hoc group consisting of five members of ZOCC and four commissioners. The plan right now is for that ad hoc group to meet six times in July, September, October, and November, I believe. The purpose of that change is to facilitate a more swift, compressed project timeline and to perpetuate more of a meeting of the minds and more collaboration between ZAC and the commission. Just like any CPayments OAM, the text would come to the, full planning commission for review and public hearing and a recommendation to the board. And I do believe that Chair Kearse has appointed some planning commissioners to that group.

Yeah, so a little more background on how this came about is, you know, the current project plan with the Walrus kind of had it going to Zach, then it had to come into the Planning Commission and getting to the board in September of an election year. That was thought not to be good timing. So the discussion is what ways can we move this process up? And I also could help point out talking to the chair is that when we redid the county plan, there was a large advisory group that was created that had it for more time than the planning commission and the board combined. And that didn't work out so well. And I think they kind of did the same thing with the zoning ordinance rewrite the last time. So the idea is let's avoid this. rush rush rush at the very end so what could be done to speed that process up and that's where this concept of a joint group meeting and then going to the planning commission with it so that's kind of where that generated from so sounds like the timelines even later than i thought because it hasn't been firmed up yet when the meetings will take place but um so it was incumbent upon me to pick four members to participate in this And I had four that came to mind pretty readily, and that would be two people that are working on this walrus now, which is Commissioner Miller, Commissioner Jasper. We have a ZOC member, Commissioner Myers, who's also attended many of these meetings. first three obvious choices. My fourth choice was to be fairly obvious, which is Commissioner Combs, who was part of the zoning ordinance review, happens to live in the western part of the county. So I'd asked all four of those if they would be willing to do this. All four of them said yes, which means I don't have to do it or the rest of us don't have to do it. But I think that's a good thing. I think that's the right choice to represent us on this. I think when it does get back to us, it will help facilitate and expedite the process that we'll have to spend with it after what they've worked out there's a meeting on thursday myself and the zoc chair are meeting with staff to kind of set this up and how it's going to go a lot of things haven't been determined yet so we'll talk a lot about that on thursday and the dates will get set up and then it will be pretty much the committee of the members i haven't heard who the ZAC members are yet. I don't know that Mike's made that selection yet. So that's kind of how that whole process played out.

Chair, I had my meeting today with Chair Randall. She let me know that she was gonna also have this be one of the discussions on our joint meeting.

That'd be a good place to have it.

And we have our meeting with the board. She was going to try to give you a call. I guess probably things got mismatched, but she said that was going to be one of the things she was going to put on the agenda for our joint meeting. Okay. Okay.

The next item I have is the work session on July 9th will double as a hearing. Two of the ledges needed to be re-advertised due to changes to the applications. Those are Dulles South Community Park and Golden Sub Station.

The the favorite topic of August meetings, I don't think are going to be needed to take place I know it's not a big Staff is not a big proponent of it, but I don't really don't think it's necessary. I'm kind of looking What do we have our September work session would we could probably have three the two tonight possibly and the south riding intergenerational community and I don't know if we'll have anything else anything that we Our July public hearing wouldn't be ready for the September work session, so we won't be adding to it. I don't think there's any need for August meetings. I know that breaks everybody's heart, but I think we'll... Can I ask a clarification?

Yeah. Brian, you said that for the July work session, we're going to double up with a public hearing? Yes. Will it just be the public hearing or will there be also work session items in July?

It's one meeting. It's a work session ordinarily, but two of the items will be public hearing items. Right, will there be ordinary work session items as well? There's one, yes. Okay. Dulles Technology Park. Okay. That's the CRTD for data centers.

the part of the park, I forget they changed the name of it, the Lightfoot Lighthouse, Lightridge Park, something. That's coming back as a public hearing? Or is that?

It is, yes. They had to change the application for the light.

So even though they're, public and they're things we've already heard, so I don't think they're gonna generate a ton of time because we've already heard them, but they have changes.

Is there an update on the agenda for the meeting, the joint meeting, which is coming up soon.

That was my last update. No, it's okay. That meeting between the board and commission is next Tuesday, the 30th, in the Dulles room at 5 p.m. You have reserved 2 to 6 on people's calendars.

Okay.

It's 5. It's 5 p.m. It starts at 5 p.m. We did present the commission's agenda topics to Chair Randall and Chair Keers and my understanding is that the two chairs are planning to meet to determine what will be on that meeting agenda.

Yeah.

The packet day should be Thursday, and I would expect just an agenda to be the packet.

All right. Anything else? And that's it. We're done? All right. This meeting is adjourned, and we'll see you all July 9th, I believe.