Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

yes okay good evening rockville today is wednesday september 9th 2026 this is meeting number 10-26 of the city of rockville planning commission i am mon sun chair of the planning commission tonight's meeting is being conducted virtually only by webex I'm joined online by Commissioners Jeff Zines, Eric Futon, and Jamie F. Finosa. Commissioners Susan Pittman and Cheyenne Salahuddin cannot join us tonight. Tonight's agenda includes one consent agenda, one review and recommendation to the mayor and council, and then will be followed by our regular scheduled commission items. Before we proceed, does any commissioners have any questions or thoughts? Okay, here now, let's proceed. Today's first agenda item is the consent agenda, request for private adding name assignment associated with approved redevelopment at 5906 Halpine Road. so a consent agenda doesn't have a discussion prior to this meeting after the agenda is posted the applicant has suggested an alternative name as a second option therefore the commission needs to discuss and make a decision based on the rules and procedure one member of the commission needs to make a request to remove this item from consent agenda so we can proceed as a regular agenda can any fellow commissioners make this request

I request it being removed from the regular agenda.

Okay. I think now this agenda is regular agenda number one. So Mr. Weisslach, can we proceed as regular agenda now?

Yes. Thanks, Madam Chair, members of the commission. We do have Principal Planner Christopher Davis to make a very brief presentation to you regarding this item.

Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the Commission. Just want to verify, is everyone able to see my screen?

Yes.

Okay, great. All right. As Mr. Wasilek indicated, this is a little bit of a unique agenda item. This is an alley name assignment associated with the project located at 5906 Halpine Road. And for some brief background, the Commission may recall that this site went through a number of various approvals associated with redevelopment, dating back to the fall of 2024, where the Marion Council rezoned the property and approved preliminary approval of the development, followed immediately by the Planning Commission in October of 2024. which allowed demolition of the existing church on the subject property and a residential redevelopment, including 36 two over two condo units. The project has since proceeded and is preparing to go through final permitting before completing construction. So as we have gotten to this point, Staff has coordinated with the applicant for kind of our final procedures, including addressing for the site. Through that process, staff has found that addressing through the kind of more conventionally methods of addressing to the adjacent streets is not feasible. So staff has considered naming the private alley associated with this development to facilitate addressing for the site. As you can see, the new development will include residential units bisected by this private alley, which will give vehicular access to Halpine Road. Again, through our research and procedures, we found that addressing this private alley will be the most beneficial in terms of functionality and operations for services like emergency responders and normal services like postal and delivery services. As Mr. Wasilek indicated, we previously recommended a name for this alley as Mellet Drive. that was determined through coordination with the applicant. But through further coordination with our public agencies, including Montgomery County, staff now suggest and recommend to the Planning Commission that the private alley be named Valor Lane. This will eliminate any sources of confusion with similar sounding names that may occur in the county. as well as provide clear direction for emergency services. So with that, that concludes staff's presentation. Happy to answer any questions commission may have.

Thank you. So commissioners, now we have staff recommended name, Valerie, and there is an alternative method to drive. So do you have a preference or any discussion on this item?

I have no problem with our trial as long as it was cleared with other county agencies and parking planning.

Okay, how about other commissioners?

I similarly have no problem with Valor. Yeah, no issues for me.

Okay, then let's have a, is there a motion?

I move to approve the name of the private alley on this, I don't know the subject subdivision, to Valor Lake.

I second the motion. 59 South Brim Road. Okay, so we have a second? Okay, and all in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Okay, the motion is approved. Thank you. Okay, let's move to our next agenda, review and action. Recommendation to the Mayor and Council on the allocation of 143 multifamily residential units to the existing Sheraton Hotel at 920 King Farm Boulevard and transfer of 16 multifamily units to the Irvington Center office area within the King Farm planned development. Mr. Westlake, is there a presentation from staff?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. One of our newest staff members, Richard Lawrence, is here to make the staff presentation. Just by way of introduction, I would note that this is one in a series of residential allocations that have occurred in the King Farm. None of them have occurred since 2018. But Richard can go into the details of how this came about and how it incorporated into the development approvals. Ultimately, this will be approved by the mayor and council, as was established by those approvals. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Richard, who has come to the city from the city of Alexandria and a number of other places and brings a lot of good experience to the development review team. So we're glad to have him aboard.

You're muted.

Not hearing you Richard.

We still cannot hear you Richard.

Hello? Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we're hearing you now.

Yes.

You can hear me now?

Yeah.

Okay. Sorry for the technical difficulties.

All right, let's get this back up.

All right, you can see and hear the presentation, correct? Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay, great. All right. I'm just confirming. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Sorry, sorry, Richard. Before, I don't see the presentation. Does anyone else can see?

No, not seeing the presentation. There we go.

Okay, okay. We see now. Thank you.

All right. Sorry, for the confusion, the headset was giving complications. Good evening. Madam chair and members of the planning commission as Mr. mentioned. My name is Richard Lawrence. I'm a principal planner with tonight. I'll present a request concerning the existing Sheridan hotel at 920 King Boulevard, which is within the King farm plan development. The request involves the allocation of residential units, as well as a density shift necessary to facilitate that proposed adaptive reuse of the extended stay hotel. i'll begin the presentation with a brief overview of the site, the subject property is the existing shirt and hotel located at 920 King farm boulevard within the urban consent a portion of King farm. The property is approximately 2.19 acres. It's currently designated commercial zoned PDKF and is currently developed with a hotel use. As shown in the aerial, the site is located at the end of King Farm Boulevard, which abuts Redland Boulevard near I-270 and is adjacent to existing residential developments within King Farm. The existing building is a 155-room, five-story hotel at approximately 76,725 square feet. The hotel use was approved through the King Farm development process in 2004, and construction was completed in 2006, and it's been operating as a hotel use since that time. The applicant is Ory Real Estate Acquisitions LLC in partnership with Lincoln Property Company. And this brings us to the specific request before the commission this evening for consideration. The applicant ultimately proposes to adaptively reuse the existing hotel by converting 143 of the 155 hotel rooms into residential apartments while retaining 12 rooms for hotel and hospitality use. To facilitate that conversion, there are two actions associated with tonight's request. First is the, excuse me, First is the allocation of 143 multifamily residential dwelling units to the property. Second is a density shift of 16 residential units into the Irvington Center office designated area, which is consistent with the density shifting provisions of the approved King Farm concept plan. Importantly, I just wanted to make note that tonight's action does not itself approve the conversion or a site plan. the applicant would still be required to submit a subsequent site plan application as well as other approvals. One important distinction is that this request does not increase the maximum residential unit capacity, which is already authorized for the King Farm Plan development. Rather, the request utilizes residential capacity already contemplated by the PD approvals and shifts a portion of that capacity to accommodate the proposed request. Again, detailed issues associated with the actual redevelopment or conversion of the site would be addressed through the subsequent site plan review. On the next slide I'll describe a series of numbers that necessitate the 16 unit density shift. The King Farm concept plan originally authorized 3,200 residential units with the ability to increase the total to 3,600 units subject to Mayor and Council approval in coordination with the annexation agreement with the King Farm plan development. Of that additional capacity, up to 300 residential units could be located within the Irvington Center office designated area Through resolution number 1096, it provides a mechanism for density shifting among sites within the plan development. To date, 3,373 dwelling units have been approved and constructed across the entire PD. More specifically, the concept plan establishes a maximum of 2,030 multifamily units of which 1,887 of those have been constructed, leaving exactly 143 multifamily units available within the PD.

Within Irvington Center,

173 of the 300 units have been constructed, leaving 127 units of capacity within Irvington Center. The proposed 16 unit density shift bridges the difference between the 127 units within Irvington Center specifically and the 143 units requested by the applicant. So for just kind of doing the simple math, 127 units within Irvington Center plus the 16 density shifted units would equal the 143 units requested by the applicant. Just taking a step back and looking at applicable resolution approvals, as there's been quite a few approvals within the King Farm PD, we want to maybe take a step back beginning with Resolution 2503, which amended the approved concept plan to allow for hotel uses within the PD and essentially on the subject property. Specifically, as it relates to unit allocation, as Mr. Waslick mentioned, we've seen this occur in a few occasions in the more recent past. This type of unit allocation requested this evening has precedent within King Farm. In 2013, through resolution number 0913, Mayor and Council approved 144 townhomes on parcel F5 and F6 within Irvington Center. In 2017, Resolution Number 0817 approved 162 multifamily units on Parcels F7 and F8. That approval was subsequently amended in 2018, which then reduced the total amount of units for those sites to 65 units. These prior actions also established the review pathway, which is applicable this evening. Therefore, planning commission reviewing and providing a recommendation and then followed by mayor and council action on the unit allocation. Based on staff's review, the requested unit allocation and the density shift are consistent with the approved concept plan, as well as in compliance with the applicable plan development governing documents, as well as the annexation agreement. The requested 143 units remain within the established multifamily capacity, and the 16-unit shift is permitted under the concept plan's density shifting provisions. I also want to reiterate that subsequent site plan review would be required post any approval of the applicant's request. So the Commission has two related roles tonight as it relates to the request. One, the recommendation to Mayor and Council concerning the allocation and the Commission's review of the density shift for compliance with the approved concept plan. Within the governing document, the concept plan specifically provides for Planning Commission to review of density shifting. And so the proposed motion specifically addresses the density shift while the recommendation addresses the overall unit allocation. With that, therefore, staff recommends that the Planning Commission recommend approval to Mayor and Council on the allocation of the 143 residential units within the King Farm plan development, which includes the 16 unit density shift into the Irvington Center office area. Staff also recommends that the Commission approve the density shift as it's in compliance with the approved concept plan. At this time, the staff concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions that the Commission may have.

Thank you, Richard. And first, welcome to Rockville. And societal commissioners, do you have any questions to staff at this time?

Yes. Mr. Lawrence, how would you respond to the testimony that we got that essentially questions the adequacy of public facilities given the shift from a hotel to residential units? Sure. Different traffic, different school needs, all that stuff.

sure and in my response to the um to the request which came in uh i believe uh this morning or late last evening um when the when the uh overall pd was approved in addition to the annexation agreement which authorized the increase of residential units up to 3600 um all the related infrastructure and capacity studies were done utilizing that maximum capacity of 3,600 units. And so based off of those findings, and if this were to approve, I believe there would be about 3,516 units maximum, which would kind of cap out the multifamily capacity for the PD. which falls under the 3600 that was part of those initial analyses. In addition to that, as I mentioned throughout the presentation, what's tonight approval does is authorize the allocation. The applicant would still be required to file a subsequent site plan application as well as a change of use application to facilitate the conversion of which additional kind of impact studies for those areas that were raised would be conducted at that time to adequately test impacts to those required infrastructure.

Any other questions?

What has been the utilization of the hotel? Is it acting at capacity, under capacity? Is this going to be a change when you go to multifamily?

The applicant is also on tonight's meeting and can speak directly to the capacity. Currently, it's operating as an extended stay hotel, but the applicant is available to answer that directly to speak to the kind of operational capacity of the existing use as well as how they envision this operating should it be approved by Planning Commission and then Mayor and Council.

Thank you. So, Mr. Westlake, is there a presentation from the applicant?

Yes, there is. I am on here, and I defer to you, Madam Chair, if I should go ahead and share my screen and start presenting, or you want to conclude this portion of the staff presentation?

Let me ask any other questions at this moment to staff. Okay, here then, let's proceed to the applicant's presentation. Thank you.

Very good. Can everyone hear me and can everyone see the screen? Yes. Very good. Yes. Well, good evening, Madam Chair and members of the Commission. My name is Jim Schroeder, and I'm the President of Horry Real Estate. As Richard so thoroughly and comprehensively just laid out, I'm here today to seek your support and recommendation for the allocation of 143 residential units and the density shifting of 16 units within the King Farm Plan development. Before I begin, though, I want to thank the city staff. I've been working with cities and municipalities across the country, and it's very refreshing to work with a team that's so thoughtful, responsive, professional, and solutions-oriented. And so I really appreciate the collaborative approach the city staff has taken throughout this process. And so I'm excited to share a project and proposal with you tonight. But first, I'd like to give you a little bit of background on ORI and what we do before we go into this specific project. At its simplest, Ori takes underperforming hotels and converts them into high quality housing. What you see here is how a typical hotel room can be transformed into a highly functional studio apartment using Ori's robotic furniture technology. The key to making this work is Ori's technology and systems, which allows a smaller apartment to live larger and therefore rent for less. Ori started out of MIT in 2015 with a simple idea. How do you make housing more affordable by making smaller spaces more livable. Because no one wants to live in a shoebox. Our founder developed a system around movable beds and movable walls. When the bed is down, you have a bedroom. When it's up, you have a full living room with a built-in integrated couch underneath. And the movable wall opens to reveal a full walk-in closet. And so you might look at this and say, that's great, it looks cool, but these are renderings. Well, this is an experimental technology, already been operating for more than a decade, with nearly 2,000 apartments across 75 buildings in 50 cities. You'll find Ori apartments across the country from DC to Atlanta, Tampa to Chicago, and Boston to San Francisco. Ori's been used by some of the largest developers in the country, including Lincoln, Graystar, Related, as well as a wide range of regional developers. And this large image isn't a rendering either. It's actually from a building I'm sitting in today. And so this background behind me, it's not a virtual background. It's an actual Ori apartment here in Atlanta. It's a fully proven system with institutional level design, installation, execution, and ongoing service. We've also collected extensive data validating the reliability and durability of the system, which we're happy to provide separately. And so historically, most of those 2000 units came from selling Ori systems to developers for new apartments. Today, we're taking that decade of experience and applying it directly to what we think is even stronger opportunity, converting underperforming hotels into housing. which is why I joined Ori a year and a half ago to lead that transition to be a real estate company. And so hotel rooms, typically around 300 to 350 square feet, are exactly where Ori adds the most value, allowing us to deliver lower rents to residents while generating higher rent per square foot for owners. For a hotel conversion, it really comes down to three components. The bed disappears to create a living room, the movable wall that I discussed creates storage and workspace, and then we add the efficient kitchen. And so taken together, these three elements transform a 300 to 350 square foot hotel room into a highly functional studio apartment. And this is what that transformation looks like in practice. When the bed is up, it's your living room. And that same 300 square feet space becomes your bedroom when the bed is down. And that brings us to Rockville and the opportunity I'm here to present to you today. This property was built in 2006. It was very well constructed, but it's now 20 years old and long overdue for a significant Marriott required renovation. Given the current hotel market in Rockville, however, the economics simply don't support making that investment and continuing to operate it as a hotel. So we're under contract to acquire the property and convert it to an already branded apartment community. So what are we proposing? We're taking those existing 155 rooms and transforming them into 155 apartments, 143 multifamily units, plus 12 hospitality units that will operate as short-term rentals for corporate relocations and others. These will be attainable middle-income homes targeted to Rockville's workforce, with 100% of the units at or below 80% AMI, including the required MPDUs. And importantly, we're reusing the existing building rather than tearing it down and starting over. And so that means less construction, less risk, and a much faster path to delivering new housing approximately nine to 12 months from closing. And so the vision is simple. It comes down to four things. Add housing, serve Rockville's workforce, reuse what's already here, and make smaller units live larger. And from the outside, the building will remain fundamentally as it is today, with targeted cosmetic improvements, primarily new paint and a few thoughtful upgrades to the entrance. As Richard laid out, we still have work to do after we get past this step. We'll coordinate closely with the King Farm architect and city staff to ensure those improvements are consistent with the community's design standards. But inside is where the real transformation happens. And what you see here is the rendering of the actual unit and how it would transform and look once we convert it to that Ori unit. And this is what that transformation looks like in plan. We keep the existing bathroom and much of the existing room intact, add a full kitchen, and then integrate the two Ori systems you saw earlier. The bed disappears to create a full living room, and the movable wall provides a walk-in closet, storage, and a workspace. So within the same roughly 350 square foot footprint, we're able to create a highly functional studio apartment. And this is the opposite view. Again, a rendering we've created from an actual image inside the hotel, looking back towards the kitchen. You can see how we take this existing hotel room, add a full kitchen, and create a finished apartment that looks and feels like a high-quality residential unit. And we'll also refresh the common areas to create a residential experience rather than a hotel experience. We want these spaces, the meeting space of the hotel, the breakfast area, we want them to be flexible and adaptable. just like our apartments, places where residents can use for co-working during the day, but also hang out, gather as a community, or host events in the evenings or weekends. And you might look at these images and think, this looks like high-end housing. And that's intentional. We believe attainable housing should still be thoughtfully designed and feel like a great place to live. But 100% of these units will be priced at or below 80% AMI, including the 22 MPDUs at 60% AMI. So what does that actually mean in terms of who can afford to live here? It means teachers, nurses, healthcare workers, life science researchers, lab technicians, city and federal employees, graduate students and staff, and early career professionals. These are the people who work in Rockville and Montgomery County today, but increasingly struggle to find high quality housing where they can afford nearby. That's really who we're designing this housing for. And the location is particularly well suited for that workforce. We're in the heart of the 270 Life Science Corridor. close to major employers within the King Farm shuttle, providing direct access to the Shady Grove Metro. But the impact goes beyond the residents themselves. We're taking an underutilized hotel and adding 143 new households to King Farm. People who support the shops, restaurants, and other amenities already there. And we're doing it through adaptive reuse without materially changing the physical character of the neighborhood. And importantly, this is housing we can deliver quickly. Assuming approvals and the closing remains on schedule, we expect to begin renovations in early 2017 and have our first residents moving in during Q1 of 2028. So this isn't housing that's three or four years away, like new construction. We can deliver it in less than 18 months from today. And finally, we have a very experienced team behind the project. I've spent more than 20 years investing in and developing multifamily housing. Our local partner, Duncan Sladell, leads Lincoln's multifamily platform in the DC region. And Asir founded Orion and has led the technology platform for more than a decade. Together, we bring real estate, local market, and technology experience necessary to execute this project successfully. So with that, we're excited about the opportunity to bring new housing to King Farm. We appreciate your consideration and support and want to thank you for your time this evening. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. I'm very excited to look at the presentation and see this coming to Rockville. So commissioners, any questions to the applicant? I can start with my question. Being a trained architect, I'm really excited to see this once we see in the concept stage and become a really established product in the market. I wonder, like you said, the typical room is like 300 to 350 units. Are all your units studio units? Are there any larger units that combine two hotel rooms into one for higher capacity?

Yep, great question. And so we're really asking around the size of units and most hotels are largely studios. And this project is no exception. It's 100% studios. And so over the past year and a half, I've spoken to dozens of hotel converters across the country to learn the best practices, what works, what doesn't, where did developers and converters fall into traps and have issues with their projects. And without a doubt, the number one most common reason is because they would combine units to try to make larger units. Their costs would start to escalate. Once you get behind walls, you find new things and then the revenue goes down. And the reason they did that is because a 300 square foot unit in most cases is not very livable. You may know this, but hotel conversions have actually become the number one form of adaptive reuse in our country. It's overtaken office conversions, but the super majority of them have been very entry-level class C low-end housing. And the reason for that is again, the 300 square feet. And this is where the Ori system technology differentiates because it lives much more like a one bedroom because you get that studio or you get the living room and you get the bedroom, you just don't get them at the same time. And so that's why for us, we don't need to combine units and we don't need to fall in that trap where the projects can fail because of those costs escalations. And because then the revenue substantially decreases, we can deliver that very high quality experience in the studio experience.

Great. Thank you. That makes sense. And do you have any already operating hotels or products in the DMV area?

We do. I will actually have a couple of my colleagues on the call here. David Rosens is from Ori and has been there for six years and can go more detail. The one I will say is one of our top projects is the Commodore. It was a gray star project. It was a massive success. And they built 340 square foot units. They were the fastest to lease in the building. They had zero concessions. And the reason was they were the value play. They were cheaper than the rest of the units in the building. And Graystar actually exited that building last month with a very, very strong success. But David, go ahead.

Yeah, and just to, hi everyone. Just to answer that question directly, the nearest hotel conversion that has used Ori is in South Carolina. That was a hotel conversion that was actually not run by the Ori team. But yeah, to answer your question directly, there are Ori apartments in buildings throughout the greater DMV area in DC and Virginia and elsewhere in Maryland, but the nearest hotel conversion is in South Carolina.

And one thing I should actually add, I mentioned Graystar just sold their asset. What was really interesting, the buyers couldn't actually tour the ore units because every single one was occupied. They were 100% occupied, and that's how strong the demand was and how attractive they were to the residents. And Duncan Sladell, our partner at Lincoln, is on the call as well. Duncan, I'm not sure if you have anything you want to add here.

Yeah, no, thanks. We actually installed the Ori systems in 1313 L Street, which is called Balsa. It's a high-rise luxury conversion, office-to-resi conversion that we completed right after COVID. And honestly, the goal there is sort of the opposite here. It was to try to drive the best bang for your buck, but really to push rents, if you could, to be able to cover the costs because costs went up pretty significantly during COVID. um and so here i think you're really getting the best value because the whole team is looking for that exact studio type to install the whole system you know the cloud bed the wall system etc and at the same time create attainable you know relatively affordable housing which we're really excited about thank you and federal commissioners do you have other questions

I did ask about current occupancy and whether this would be an intensification of use.

Yes. Great question. Thank you for reminding me that question there. So the current hotel's performance is substantially down from prior to COVID. Prior to COVID, it was a very well-performing hotel, along with most of the hotels in the Rockville market. And what you saw is a fundamental demand change where people could do Zoom calls like this as opposed to go meet in person nearly as frequently. And so many of the hotels have suffered substantially. Their rental rates have dropped precipitously and their occupancy is severely down. I don't have the exact occupancy, but back when it used to be at 80% plus, as you would expect from most hotels, occupancy has been down around 50%. And so for their ability to operate and maintain, it's very difficult, much less to be able to justify reinvesting the hotel to maintain the brand standards that a Marriott brand would typically require. And so one thing I will say, your question is really getting into utilization and optimization of, will it be a strain on the roads, traffic, or otherwise? This hotel operated very well for 12, 14 plus years, utilizing that. And so we are not going to be going anything beyond what operated. And to your point, yes, it has been down the past five years, but we're just not going to be going past where it was before.

And we'll just add to that. Sorry, go ahead.

What do you think about parking demand? Yep. Great question. So there is a lot that is part of the same ownership. It wasn't highlighted in the map. It is a surface lot and that is part of the property. And so there's 1.1 parking ratio between those two parcels. and that we believe that will fully meet the demand.

I was just going to add, just as it relates to your question as well, think about the studios at 330 to 350 square feet. They're really, unfortunately, no room for families here, but that also should answer the question that you won't really have any school capacity issues.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other commissioners?

Yeah, I have a question. I think you had mentioned the existing hotel uses extended stay. Are there currently kitchen facilities in the units? There are not.

And so to be clear, it's not marketed and advertised as extended stay. I do believe there are residents that are staying longer term because the hotel's performance has been declining. Because of that, there are no kitchens in place. And that is the key major upgrades that we're doing are adding the kitchens. and then increasing the electrical capacity to ensure that we can support those appliances in the kitchens.

Yeah, it's probably more appropriate at later stages when you come in front of us, but I'm very curious about adding that infrastructure to put full kitchens in hotel rooms that were not designed for them. So yeah, I'll be looking forward to seeing those details when you come back in front of us.

Absolutely. We look forward to it as well.

I have another question. So currently you have 143 residential units and 12 extended stay. So how about even in the future, if the market shifts, how easy can you shift between those two products?

Great question. And so really many multifamily operators in the industry have started to include a component of this short-term rentals. and then operate it in this gray area. Because when you go between call it a one month lease and six month lease, you have corporate relocations. You might have a consultant that's on assignment or someone that's just moved to the Rockville area because of a new job and they don't know where they want to live yet. And they say, let me test this out. I'm not ready to make a commitment for 12 months, but let me do something in between. And so you have this hybrid that goes from one day to three or six months. That's kind of this gray area in between. And so we feel fully comfortable with 12 units absolutely staying within that to your point of there may be demand for more and we would still operate them as multifamily and most multifamily buildings have some small component of those, but it's not a significant component, but we don't want it to become nightly where then the building goes back to the hotel use. And so it's this hybrid of in between.

Okay, thank you. That sounds really totally makes sense. So any other questions from commissioners? All right, if not, is there a motion? Move approval. I think today is a recommendation, right? Is recommendation also needs a motion?

Yes.

Okay, then please.

If staff would put up the recommendation again on the screen so I say this right.

And Madam Chair, could you ask if there's anyone who would like to address the commission? I don't think there is anyone just to cover that base.

Yes. Is there any public from the public would like to provide testimony? Okay. Hearing none. And I think we can now move to the motion.

If I may, I move that the planning commission approve the density shift in compliance with the approved concept plan.

I second.

All right. All in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. And the motion passed. Thank you very much.

Thank you all. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Looking forward to next step. Very quick.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

I think we set the motion up to be in two parts. Is that correct, Richard?

Correct there's the motion for the density shift and I, I believe they still have to recommend planning commission to the allocation man council do the allocation of the 143. Right.

Okay. So can you. So, as the presentation, the slides, or I will get that back up.

Here, I thought I was being good.

So proposed motion, so we have to say the first one as a motion as well?

That's the actual recommendation to the mayor council.

Okay, so I'm confused. Which motion?

So can I jump in here? I propose we just do two motions because we've already passed the second part of the motion. which was to approve the density shift. So I'll make the motion to recommend to mayor and council the allocation of 143 residential units within the King Farm plan development to include the density shift, the 16 units to the Arlington Center office designated area. Second.

All right. All in favor, please say aye and raise your hand.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. This motion passed. So that's good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all again. Thank you. Okay. So now let's move to our commission items. So do we have a staff liaison report, Mr. Westlake?

Yes. Thank you, Madam chair. Just very briefly. The next meeting will be, September 23rd, two weeks from this evening, I expect that we will be in the council chamber since there is a council meeting in between there. A couple of items lining up for that meeting. One is tentative, and that is Red Gate Park managerial referral. I believe that more likely would show up in one of your October meetings. But there's also a couple of waivers for a project that's coming forward. on Research Boulevard. And there's also a potential historic district map amendment, but we won't know whether you will see that until the HTC is going to reconsider that recommendation and they will be doing that next week. So that may or may not be on your agenda as a sectional map amendment. Looking ahead to October, we have the annexation plan for the WINX property. which is at the end of North Stone Street Avenue, adjacent to the Lincoln Park community, that is coming forward. And then there's also a site plan for a bank addition to the Falls Grove Village Center. So I have a number of interesting items coming up. See, another thing I would add, as you know, the zoning ordinance and zoning map became effective during, actually on August 1st, during your break, And so we are using the new ordinance and actually they helped some processes already just in a little over a month that we have been using it. We're also identifying, as we do utilize the document, things that may need to be tweaked or changed that could bring back in an omnibus zoning text amendment at some point in the near term. But we're very pleased to be able to use the code. And with that, I don't have anything to add unless there are questions.

Thank you. Any questions?

How did the, that historic preservation designation go with mayor and council, or is that still coming up?

That is coming up on the 14th on Monday.

Thank you. Okay. So any old business or new business? New business.

Please. After reviewing the name change proposed by staff originally, it struck me as odd that we didn't have street naming guidelines. It is something that the county has. The city has to follow them, at least for safety reasons. The particular issue with this last item that we had was the designation of a living person who may or may not have committed crimes, may or not have committed civil actions, and if living can commit those after we designate the name. So I would propose that we have a more formalized guidelines for street name.

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Dines. So Mr. Westlake, can you provide some background on this?

Well, I did do a little bit of research for street naming as this process went forward. And I found something from the 90s that we actually adopted the, as policy, the commission adopted the county's policies as they existed then. It was my understanding that the street naming policies were revised maybe 10, 12 years ago. So those have been up, the counties have been updated. since then. I think it probably is a good idea to have at least some guidance as commissioners when these items come up. So I'd be happy to put something together for you if you'd like to consider as a commission adopting some street naming policy.

Any other thoughts from commissioners?

i i uh i find myself in agreement with my fellow commissioner um i have oddly specific opinions on naming things after people uh so we share that uh in common commissioner science um so i would be interested in uh seeing some guidance or guidelines um and i'd be also Curious isn't the right word. I believe that I live on a street that is named for a family that owned slaves. So there's a Pandora's box that might be opened up with this. So we should be ready for that.

Commissioner Espinosa, any thoughts?

I don't really have anything to add to the discussion at this point. We'll see as things develop a little bit.

Yeah, I have no problem doing this research. And so do we know that this policy established by the commission or the mayor and council?

The document that I saw was adopted by the commission.

Okay.

I'm sorry. I would add that there was a naming effort that the council undertook probably 10 years ago. looking at public parks, bridges, other things besides streets, not including streets. So that's another kind of avenue that we can look at to be consistent with those naming guidelines.

Okay. I'm interested to see maybe do some research on that part as well and how that influence the naming of the street. So my question is, so those guidelines will impact the future street naming. Are we going to change the street naming as well, follow this guideline?

Changing the naming of actual streets?

No. No, okay. Just guiding the future naming, okay. Okay.

When you change the name of somebody's streets, it's like they've moved without moving. have to change all of their documentation. The post office has to be notified. It's a disaster. So you do it only upon disaster.

Okay. So let's say they have a good policy for the future road naming. All right, thank you for the suggestion. And so I see that we don't have any minutes to approve today, right? And I don't see any correspondence for FAI. So we are ready to adjourn. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Real quick on the correspondence thing, I just want to give my fellow commissioners a heads up. I found a couple of items in my spam folder, including one related to the presentation today. I don't usually check it. I don't know what comes through and what doesn't that filter. So just a note or a recommendation to check your spam filter every once in a while. I think I found three in there from the past week related to coming into the planning commission email address.

Hmm. You mean coming from Mr. Westlake's email or commission email?

No, that looks like they came direct to the planning commission. One was, let's see.

I know you received one this afternoon related to the King form. That came in to the planning.commission at Rockville MD email. Right.

Yeah, I've got one from today. I've got one from Friday and then one from September 1st that all look like they came to the Planning Commission email. Planning.commission. I don't know. Usually my filter is set up so that only Commissioner Zions' emails go to my junk. So I don't know. I think I have to look at it.

Same thing happens when I send it to my wife.

Okay, thank you. I don't think I even received the commission email. Maybe I need to check my spam as well.

I'll forward these to Jim and, you know, he can, I don't know, maybe he got them and maybe not. He can circulate them if he needs to.

That would be great. Thank you. Okay, thank you for the suggestions. So now we're ready to adjourn. Is there a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn the meeting. Seconded.

All in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye.

The meeting is adjourned. Good night, Rafael. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.