City Council - Regular Meeting

Matt Adams submitted a petition with 29 signatures in support of the Virginia Village affordable housing process, urging council to continue without delay. Bob O'Brien asked council to consider the zoning impact on the neighboring areas when reviewing the Virginia Village project and asked for protections for neighboring properties. Anna Ortiz and Tim Allison asked council to maintain the existing setback of 35 to 40 feet from Winter Hill Homes, discretionary review, consider the impact of additional residents on Big Chimneys Park and incorporate a plan for green and recreation space into the RFP to offset the impact of the park. And then other comments received were Edwin Henderson wrote to say that the Maple and Annandale roundabout and sidewalk project was taking too long and asked the City Council to set firm completion dates. And Craig Riegler asked for an update on the Park Avenue Great Streets project and provided suggestions for an expanded farmers market.

And that's all of them. Well, there were several that were received after the deadline that you were forwarded separately.

So they're not in this list, but we will add them.

And for the public's benefit, your deadline cutoff is noon. Well, let's move on to receive a public comment, either virtually or in person tonight.

I don't think we've received anything for remote public comment, but we have several speaker slips that we've received for here in the room. So you have three minutes, and I'll call the first person and get the timer started. So, Sonia Brehe.

All right. Good evening. My name is Sonya Brehe. I'm the Northern Virginia Advocacy Director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth. We're a regional smart growth advocacy organization here in the D.C. region, and I live here in the Falls Church community just across Route 29 from Maple Ave. I'm here tonight to speak in support of city efforts to preserve and expand affordable housing options in the Virginia Village neighborhood. This is a unique opportunity and important opportunity for the city to provide much needed affordable housing and support its housing goals. Leveraging the city properties to either preserve and improve the existing affordable units or identifying opportunities to ideally provide significantly more affordable housing is a winning proposition. Virginia Village is in a great walkable location served by multiple bus routes and is a short bus or bike ride to two metro stations. Providing more affordable homes here would allow people to live closer to their work, provide access to quality schools and other opportunities the city has to offer, and contribute to a diverse and vibrant Falls Church. I APPRECIATE THE PROACTIVE COMMUNITY OUTREACH YOU'VE UNDERTAKEN, LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK AND INCORPORATING MUCH OF THAT INTO THE REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS, DETAILING THE THREE POTENTIAL SCENARIOS OF VARYING SIZE AND SCOPE, WHILE ALSO SETTING THE PARAMETERS FOR EACH ALLOWS FLEXIBILITY BASED ON WHAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE FEASIBLE. and will help identify the winning development scenario that both works for the community and meets the city's vision. I appreciate and support that the RFP seeks to expand affordable units to serve larger households, ensure quality modernized units and sustainable design, provide affordable units at 30 to 80% of the area median income, with 30% targeting much needed lower AMIs at 50% and below. ensuring setbacks and building heights step down to provide well-designed transition to neighboring Winter Hill and Big Chimneys Park, maintaining pedestrian access to Big Chimneys Park, and including shade trees, open space, and placemaking. Staff developed a thoughtful and inclusive RFP that will help to identify the best opportunity to preserve and expand affordable housing in the Virginia Village. I ask that you approve the RFP and supporting plan updates. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Teresa Clark.

Hi, I'm Teresa Clark.

I live in Winter Hill, and I'm as nervous as can be.

Okay, basically, I've been here for 35 years, and I just love and enjoy living in Winter Hill. the affordable housing near us, I think it's a wonderful idea. It's great for the community and everything. The only thing I'm concerned about is that the stories, I suggest to have a three-story building with a setback at a maximum of 40 feet. The garage and the service, I would not suggest having it facing Winter Hill. And also having outside space, which I think is very, very important. That's it. Thank you.

Next, we have Joseph Cannati.

Good evening and welcome to everyone who supports affordable housing. I previously submitted comments, but my comments tonight are grounded in a meeting we had with the mayor and a couple of walking abouts. So this was not in my previous. I'm Joseph Kennedy. I live at 255 Gundry Drive in a home adjacent to the affordable and subsidized housing. My primary concerns are with the planned competitive bidding process that puts the cart before the horse and puts the mayor, council, and the community in a take-it-or-leave-it position regarding the final configuration of the affordable housing of Virginia Village. My advice is based on recent meetings, as I said. Tonight you will have a first reading of the zoning modifications at the same time you are planning to authorize the RFP. that incorporates suggestions but no real requirements. Based on my experience, I'm afraid that you should use a somewhat modified process. First, complete the first reading of the zoning modification, thus leaving the zoning requirements open for public and developer's comments. I think it's important to get development comments. This would permit the council to have more input and control over the final RFP. Second, publish a draft RFP with minimum requirements that solicits from the public and potential developments, outlines of proposed housing configurations, and the zoning requirements necessary to make those configurations both feasible and affordable. Do not limit yourselves merely to capacity statements that will only elicit brochures from developers. Most importantly, the suggested sequence allows the council and therefore the values and communities you represent to maintain control and decision making over the final consideration of the new housing. In summary, finalize the zoning, then compete the RFP based on the developers and communities input solicited through public comment. on zoning and draft RFP. I'm asking the council to defer publishing the final RFP and finalize the zoning and RFP based on the public and developer's comments. Then run the competitive procurement process. I believe this is the way for the council and the public to retain control, meet the mayors and councils, STATED GOAL TO SUCCESSFULLY BUILD, QUOTE, A HIGH QUALITY COMMUNITY THAT FITS WITHIN THE SURROUNDINGS AND WHILE MEETING THE CITY'S NEED FOR MUCH MORE ADDITIONAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

NEXT WE HAVE CARL ANDERSON.

THANK YOU. I'M CARL ANDERSON. resident of Winter Hill for 48 years now. First of all, I want to say I fully support affordable housing and I think we have two beautiful models or existing beautiful models already in Winter Hill. You have the subsidized apartments on the west side of Annandale Road and you have the apartments on James Street and then you have the apartments on South Virginia Avenue downhill from the Winter Hill townhomes. And they all have a lot of greenery around them. There's a lot of green space. The residents can get out and mingle with the other residents of Winter Hill, and it adds to the community feeling that we have in Winter Hill. The second thing I'd like to say is I didn't want to come here tonight And I don't like saying this because I don't really trust the city council to do the right thing. I've been watching really ugly buildings going up for the last 10 years. You always allow exceedances for height. You allow the elimination of buffers so that the buildings look like warehouses coming right up against the curb. And it's like if you look in Arlington and look in Falls Church, it's like The Arlington County Board and the Falls Church City Council is trying to turn northern Virginia into northeastern New Jersey. I went to school at Rutgers and I was really appalled at the urbanization up there. They have a lot of beautiful areas in New Jersey. A lot of the cities are not among those beautiful areas. Finally, I just one of the problems I have is that I just feel like the people are not really listened to and A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE I THINK FEEL THE SAME WAY I DO AND THAT'S MAYBE WHY ONE REASON WHY YOU DON'T SEE MORE PEOPLE HERE BECAUSE 15 YEARS AGO I TOLD MYSELF I WAS NEVER GOING TO COME TO ANOTHER ONE OF THESE MEETINGS BUT HERE I AM. ONLY BECAUSE SOMEBODY ASKED ME TO. BUT I'LL JUST FINISH WITH MY COMMENT I SENT IN THIS MORNING. MAYOR HARDY RECENTLY SENT OUT A JUNE 12TH UPDATE STATING THAT OUR GOAL should be to create a high quality community that fits within its surroundings. I would like for the mayor to be held to her words. Falls Church already has too many high rises that don't look like industrial warehouses. I recall that when Pearson Square, which is at least an attractive building, I'll give it that. Pearson Square is a beautifully well-designed building. But when it was built in the early 2000s, from five to seven homes in our community were structurally damaged. They were the homes closest to Pearson Square blasting and excavation operations. At the time, I was president of the Warner Hill Homeowners Association. And I wrote to the city protesting the damage to our community and describing what I knew of the damage. I'd been able to go into a couple of homes. OK. Anyway, I just think it's very telling that the city did not respond to my letter. And that's why I say we have a government of the developers, by the developers, and for the developers. And I'm sorry for the nasty tone, but that's the way I feel. Good night.

Next, we have Heather Pressler. Heather Pressler.

All right. Thank you for hearing my comment tonight. Carl, thank you for your comments as well, too, because I actually had the same hesitancy to come here today because I've been to several meetings on this project in particular, but other projects in the past as well and have felt the same sadness about coming to this meeting because I just feel like I DON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE WHEN I SPEAK, BUT I AGREE WITH A LOT OF THE COMMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN SAID SO FAR WITH REGARDS TO US NOT HAVING ZONING SET IN PLACE BEFORE WE HAVE AN RFP THAT'S GOING OUT, NO STANDARDS THAT WE KNOW OF THAT THIS BUILDING IS GOING TO MEET, AND THEN BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, ONE PROPOSAL WILL BE PICKED, THAT ONE COMES FORWARD, AND NOBODY GETS TO COMMENT ON IT BECAUSE IT'S TOO QUICK OF A PROCESS. And I've also expressed this in writing that I feel like this has been a long term in the making and I wanna see this happen, but I wanna see this happen with proper input from the community, with us being able to have a discussion about what our new neighbor, meaning the giant building presumably, is going to look like and how it feels. and having that set in space in time. I also think it needs to be set fairly for the whole city. So I kind of feel like Winter Hill has been the butt of some of these projects recently where these projects are right next to our community and being built on special RFPs at all times, which means other parts of the city don't have to have those next to them. We had an example of an acreage next to Oak Street Elementary that was much larger than this parcel that we're talking about here. And that was turned into a residential park and not developed. And I know that there are many reasons for that. However, it definitely feels like that was done because someone doesn't want it next to their house. house, but if we put it next to Winter Hill, that's fine. I think it just needs to be a standard that we set for all parcels of certain sizes. So if we're saying that all parcels of two acre sizes can be developed with a seven story building, then that needs to be fair and the whole city needs to agree to that. And if the whole city doesn't want to agree to that, then maybe we have questions about why that is being put next to Winter Hill and not other homes and other people's homes in the city, right? So I think it just needs to be fair zoning rules across the board when we're looking at the development of the city in general. But again, on this particular project, my concerns are that this has been a very quick timeline. We don't have enough time to, even in the most important phases of this project, have community comment or feedback on, and then it's just done. And then it's either we're going to fail, so then the project's not moving forward at all, or we're moving forward with something that maybe the community is really opposed to. which could have a whole bunch of other issues for the city. I will just say that I moved to the city as a single mother, and so I was potentially one of those people. I will say that a lot of my friends at that time were same in Winter Hill, and the ones that moved away were the ones that couldn't purchase property. It wasn't that we were looking for rentals, we were looking for purchasing. I don't know if that angle has been examined at all for some of these future affordable housing projects, but that was really the problem with keeping residents in Winter Hill.

Thank you.

Next, we have Peter Markham. Peter Markham.

Fred Thompson is ill and couldn't make it tonight. I'm reading from what he has written, and I think everyone at the council has received a copy of this. Fred and I are forward affordable housing and Virginia Village. Fred has some suggestions of which you are probably already aware and which have been echoed by some of the people in this room. Fred's main suggestions are that the RFP clarify the basis for the award, allow and encourage alternate proposals and eliminate the 6-7 conundrum and use the zoning standards in proposed TO26-15 as the technical guidance for the builders. And I'll summarize this. What Fred suggests is that the EAC, this is rewording it, The EAC will choose and propose a ward to the respondent whose proposal provides the maximum number and range of affordable units while minimizing any costs incurred by the City. The City Council will make the final determination. Once selected, the respondents may commence negotiations with the City Manager and his respective designees on an interim agreement. The next heading under Fred's suggestions is allow and encourage alternate proposals. I'll summarize this. Offerors may submit proposals that depart from stated requirements. Such proposals show clearly identify why the acceptance of the proposal would be advantageous to the government. Any deviations from the terms and conditions of the solicitations as well as the comparative advantage to the government shall be clearly identified and explicitly defined. The government reserves the right to amend the solicitation to allow all offerors an opportunity to submit revised proposals based on the revised requirements. And Fred's last suggestion, and one I think is a good one, eliminate the 6-7 conundrum and use the zoning standards in proposed T-026-15 as the technical guidance for the bidders. And he suggests... Wait a minute. He feels that we should stick with the zoning code that we have, and he also says that the council should be looking, rather than at a range of heights, limitations, like the limitation, will it be, four stories or 40 feet and choose the lesser of the two options. And it says the council should request that the city attorney provide specific advice on how the proposed T-026-15 ordinance needs to be properly drafted with respect to height limitations so that it can be uh enforceable i think what fred wants the city to do is to set the rules out for the developers i think i'm done here thank you goodbye next we have beverly warnock

Good evening, Mayor Hardy and members of City Council.

My name is Beverly Warnock and I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my father, a private property owner and resident of one of the independent quadplexes in Virginia Village. He has owned this property for 60 years. To be completely frank, this entire process has been disheartening.

Our background is not in municipal planning and zoning.

When we listen to these meetings, we are trying to decipher code and planning terminology. Throughout this project, private owners were given repeated assurances that the city wasn't going to do anything to our land. In fact, Matt and Jack stated in a community meeting that property owners could simply reject any new zoning, thereby maintaining our current zoning and avoiding your guardrails. Is this really the case? Throughout this, I keep asking, what's the catch? What is the financial and economic impact you're making on our property? Please speak to that. As we sit through these sessions, it has become painfully clear that the city is proposing sweeping actions that will fundamentally restrict our property rights. You may call them guardrails, but to us they are significant, uninvited restrictions. Mayor Hardy, at the June 15th work session, you stated, hopefully this process is signaling to the non-city owned quads is we're pretty serious about doing something. And now would be a really great time to join in because the bar by right is a pretty high bar. Hearing that felt less like an invitation to collaborate and more like a high pressure tactic to box us in. But these aren't just units on a grid map. They are people's homes, investments, retirement plans, family legacies. This neighborhood is my legacy. I was brought home from the hospital to Virginia Village. It was my first apartment after college, and my plan is for it to be my retirement place. To the Winterhill residents who support this redevelopment plan, I ask you this. How would you feel if this proposal included your home? How would you feel if others dismissed your concerns because they believed their macro benefits outweighed the costs to you? The difference between your neighborhood and mine is smaller than you think. THE SAME RESPECT, TRANSPARENCY AND CONSIDERATION YOU WOULD EXPECT FOR YOUR PROPERTY, FOR ANY OF YOUR PROPERTY, MUST BE EXTENDED TO OURS. PUBLIC INPUT IS ONLY VALUABLE WHEN IT IS TRULY CONSIDERED AND NOT JUST A CHECK BOX BEING CHECKED. This isn't about opposing progress. It's about insurance, ensuring that progress doesn't come at the expense of fairness, informed consent and respect for the people who call this community home. Please slow this process down. Thank you.

Next. Next, we have H. Rebecca Johnson.

Good evening, Mayor and members. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL. I APPRECIATE THE COMMENTS FROM THE PREVIOUS SPEAKER AND ACTUALLY HAVE WALKED THE STREETS WITH THE COUNCIL MEMBERS AS WELL AS WALKED THE STREETS WITH THE OWNERS AND THE STREETS WITH THE TENANTS OF THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE. HISTORY IS NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART. I understand that the priority before you is housing, low income and affordable, and specifically delivering more units. And I agree that we should have more affordable units in Falls Church. But the question is not whether we grow, it's whether we do it that is complete, responsible, and aligned with the values of the council that have already historically preserved previously. VIRGINIA VILLAGE GIVES YOU THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY IF YOU REQUIRE IT. THIS IS NOT JUST AN AGING HOUSING STOCK. IT IS A DEFINING PART OF FALSE CHURCH HISTORY BUILT DURING THE WAR WAR II WAR WORKER HOUSING EXPANSION THAT SHAPED THIS CITY. AND IMPORTANTLY, A FORMAL HISTORIC SURVEY WITH THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORIC RESOURCES HAS NOT YET BEEN COMPLETED. This would allow that village to become a historic overlay district and allow the opportunity for owners, both city and non, to tap into historic restoration tax credits to restore these homes. Moving forward without that step closes the door on the opportunity for these owners. I am going to bring up a term called blended preservation, which I have written about previously. Blended preservation is an opportunity that is not anti-growth. It is actually disciplined growth. We have seen this type of blended opportunity in Arlington and Georgetown. I have cited this for a specific inclusion into the small area plan that Mr. Dave Snyder asked me to include. And there's a footnote to the Arlington one for your reference. Blended preservation is the fastest path to getting units approved and built without opposition. WITHOUT DELAYS, WITHOUT LAWSUITS, AND WITHOUT REDESIGNS. IT ALLOWS YOU TO ADD UNITS, DIVERSIFY HOUSING TYPES, INCREASE DENSITY WHILE MAINTAINING THE ARCHITECTURAL SCALE AND COMMUNITY FABRIC THAT ALREADY EXISTS. IT REDUCES DISPLACEMENT. IT PROTECTS THE ADJACENT E.B. HENDERSON SITE, THAT'S A DHR SITE. IT PROTECTS THE BIG CHIMNEYS PARK. and creates a financially viable path forward through tax credits and low income to be used. I ask the council to please consider not approving any zonings today until we do get a historic overlay survey through the DHR. I also want to have the RFPs to support preservation in addition to units. Preservation is a yes vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Hal Litman.

Thank you so much.

Oh, it was Hal Litman is the next speaker. Oh, sorry.

I think, is it OK? Oh, sorry.

Was it somebody else?

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

BEFORE YOU START ME ON TIME, I JUST WANT TO SAY SOMETHING REALLY QUICK. PLEASE LET ME SAY THAT AS A FORMER COUNCIL MEMBER AND VICE MAYOR, I HAVE EVERY CONFIDENCE IN THE COUNCIL, EVEN IF THEY DON'T DO WHAT I THINK IS IMPORTANT AND RIGHT. GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL MEMBERS. I'M HAL LITMAN, AND WHILE WHEN I APPEARED BEFORE YOU LAST MONTH, I was speaking for myself, I can now add that I am speaking as President of CBC. In my statement in May, I expressed concerns based on the 2021 Joint League of Women Voters CBC series of forums on affordable housing in the city. As I noted, the two basic themes of those forums were the issues of economic and racial diversity, which over the years, the city's efforts had been unsuccessful in realizing. After further due diligence since then, my initial concerns still appear to be warranted. Let me explain why by sharing some important data points. Since 2006, aside from pre-existing affordable units, the city has brought 204 units into its inventory, of which 189, that's 88%, have been at between 60% and 80% AMI. That's the area median income. By way of comparison, in 2021, the AMI was slightly under 130,000, which amounted to almost 80,000 at the 60% level for a family of four. Now the AMI is 164,000, which at the 60% level is almost $100,000 for four persons. What does this mean in terms of our failure to address economic and racial diversity? Just 3% of rental properties in our city are at 40% AMI. That's currently $65,000 for four persons. And about one-third OF OUR CURRENT WAITING LIST APPLICANTS ARE AT 30% AMI OR BELOW. THAT'S JUST UNDER $50,000 FOR FOUR PERSONS. IN THIS REGARD, IT MUST BE NOTED THAT INCOMES FOR LOWER WAGE EARNERS SUCH AS HOTEL WORKERS, RETAIL WORKERS, HOUSE CLEANERS AND JANITORS RANGE FROM BETWEEN THE $30,000 AND THE $40,000. HOURLY EMPLOYEES SUCH AS KITCHEN STAFF, FAST FOOD WORKERS, BARISTA'S AND SERVERS WAIT STAFF ARE ALL IN THE $13 TO $17 AN HOUR RANGE.

WHICH AT FULL TIME AMOUNTS TO ABOUT $30,000.

CLEARLY, OUR EFFORTS OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS HAVE NOT FOCUSED ENOUGH ON THESE AND OTHER SUCH LOWER INCOME WAGE EARNERS. FURTHERMORE, OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS OF THE CITY'S AFFORDABLE HOUSING EFFORTS, THE PERCENTAGE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RESIDENTS HAS REMAINED STUCK IN THE 4 TO 5 PERCENT RANGE. IN EFFECT, AMONG OTHER THINGS, WE HAVE NEVER ADDRESSED THE LEGACY OF THE LONG AGO ACTIONS BY THE THEN FALLS CHURCH TOWN COUNCIL to de-annex roughly one-third of its territory back to Fairfax County to reduce the influence of black voters in local elections. To sum up, and I hope I can get it done, I continue to believe the city has never focused adequately on the essential issue of bringing about a more racially and economically diverse community. I'd like to recommend lowering some of the AMI figures, knowing that I have little time in the current proposal. They're all too high. I THINK WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON 30% AMI, AND THEN I WOULD GATHER THAT THE COUNCIL IS NOT GOING TO HAVE A CHANCE TO CONSIDER THIS TONIGHT, SO I RESPECTFULLY ASK THAT IT BE ADDRESSED IN THE NEAR FUTURE. THANKS.

THANK YOU.

Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate you, dear Mayor and team. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. So Winter Hill is a really lovely and cute neighborhood. The greenery, the neighbors, everybody knows everybody. The walkability is just a really lovely place. But the thing that's going to happen, low income housing is critical, I understand. But I think it needs to be spread out in the city rather than it being concentrated in one area. Because by doing so, if you just leave it in the area where it's going to be a vertical structure, the structure is going to be so daunting and aesthetically unappealing and will not i mean especially the whole idea of the way it's so open and bright and lovely i think it's going to kind of you know pull away from that whole sunlight and bright place that we have right now and i also think that the um the the real estate value of our homes might be negatively impacted I also feel that maybe in terms of the accessibility for school buses to get around. Eventually, I don't know how that's going to work out and things like that. I don't know if they're going to have easy access to getting around to that place. But yes, those are my few words that I wanted to share with you. Thank you.

Next is Joseph Shirazi.

Good evening, Council. My name is Joseph Shirizi. I live on Gundry Drive in Falls Church in the Winter Hill area. My home was built by right by a developer. Ah! So was everyone else's in Winter Hill, by the way. I just want to start off and say I have every confidence this Council will make the right choice. I have every confidence that every comment being given tonight is being listened to. And just for example, last year, City Council rejected a special exception proposal on the empty lot behind the Burke and Herbert Bank because it was lazy and it wasn't a good proposal. So I know that this council will reject bad proposals by developers and that you all are doing a great job and putting in the time and reading every word. And I appreciate it. I also want to thank council for doing an RFP. I think this is way better than any development project or zoning change I've seen done in the city in the last 10 years. Because with the RFP, I get to see what the developers are proposing. before we change the zoning. So I don't have to look at a gray box. I get to know what's actually going to get built there before we even decide if you're allowed to build it or not. I think that's a great idea. Please keep it up. Please do not delay the RFP process. The urgency for affordable housing is too important to delay it. I think the city council should consider issuing a municipal bond to fund a larger development project. We have all of the units that back up to the bowling alley and Gibson Street is also owned by the city. We could take over the street and expand that size so there's no garage facing Winter Hill and do something much bigger that doesn't tower over Winter Hill that's completely on the bowling alley side. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe about 950 families applied for those affordable housing units. The cities obviously can't meet that right now with what we have. So I think that's a good baseline place to start for the number of units that we should be targeting with this RFP. And we should build at least 900 units. If that's 50 per floor, then that'll be roughly 20 floors. And if we took over Gibson Street, we could build that backing up to the bowling alley, not towering over any existing Winter Hill homes. And to do that, I think we also should give a particular number to the owners of every other building in Virginia Village. And let's buy them out. Let's give them an actual number, an actual offer. I'm kind of disappointed that hasn't happened yet. Let's see what else. I think that's pretty much everything I've got. Last note that I'll say is we need a lot more affordable housing in Virginia as a commonwealth. We're not meeting the needs of our community, and we also need affordable housing to have dignity. so none of the units in virginia village right now have a single handicap ramp they're not handicap accessible we did a proclamation about that today and i think that they should all be accessible in the future thank you next is ellen collette

Hello. Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. My name is Maria Belenquelet. I am a tenant in one of the city-owned apartments at Virginia Village. I've been involved over the past several months, all invested significant time and energy in discussing the future of Virginia Village. We attended meetings, shared concerns, asked questions, contributed ideas, and city staff did very good work in listening and capturing what we had to say. So thank you for that, but I do think that it is time for the next step. And as I said, I think an RFP is a tool for understanding what is possible and gathering the information needed to make informed decisions. I'd rather know than not know what could be done. For decades, Falls Church has worked to provide affordable housing to residents with limited income. Today, more than 900 households remain on the city's affordable housing wait list. Virginia Village is part of that story. I feel privileged that I had access to that program, but I don't think affordable housing should be a privilege. More people should be able to access it. The buildings are aging. The need for affordable housing remains significant. So to me, issuing an RFP will not determine the future of Virginia Village. It will help us better understand our options. Thank you.

Next is Stephanie Powell.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I have concerns about the proposed development of the Virginia Village project. My name is Stephanie Powell, and I stand before you today as a homeowner for 11 years in the Cherry Hill townhouse development on Gundry Drive. As a homeowner, I have three major concerns that relate to the proposed development of Virginia Village that will sit behind Cherry Hill and connect to Big Chimneys Park. Specifically, over the past five years, I've experienced close hand repercussions of living close to Big Chimneys Park and the West Broad project with Harris Teeter. Specifically, my parking spot is in the private lot that we own that is used as the current handicap access to Big Chimneys Park. Because of the popularity of the park, which I really like, there has been massive amounts of pedestrians to access the park through our private parking lot, which creates a huge liability situation for us individuals as well as our Cherry Hill properties. And this is in concern to us having egress in and out of our spot. So, my first concern is that I seek from you all to relocate the handicap access to the lower part of Gibson and Shirley Street, which is part of this Virginia Villas project, that can only be accomplished by stipulating this specifically in the RFP prior to it going to the developers, so we can make sure that this is in their plan. The second issue, which was actually provided at, I went to two of the different sessions and it doesn't seem to appear in the RFP list, is that they create a loop in regards to traffic whereby Shirley Street would connect back to Maple Street at the end of the city's property, which they own, which is beside the tax analyst building. This increase in proposed dwellings will not only increase traffic in this area, which is a currently very heavily congested area, especially in the morning with bus stops, but also it would create a one way in Well, right now we have a current one way in and one way out situation and what I'm proposing is that you make a loop so that it would allow for a consistent traffic flow in and out of the new development. And once again, this item was not listed in what will be the RFP and so I believe that that is important. I believe that, I don't think I have time for my third point, but basically it's a question of what was all the meetings for. Hardly any of these specifics have been included in the meeting, from the meetings in the RFP. And I believe that this is irresponsible of you all as counsel. And I would ask that you would reconsider and pause the RFP until we can get these specifics entered. Thank you for your time.

Next is Nader Barouk. Alex Maricola.

Hi, council. I'm Alex. I rent in Falls Church. I think I've met some of you guys sometimes. Surprise, I'm going to talk about Virginia Village too. This is a good thing. The RFP is good. You guys should push that forward and move this along. What I'd really like council to think about is weighing impacts. I think a lot of people have come up here and expressed their concerns, and they're all very valid concerns. But I don't hear a lot of real impact to the harms of having more affordable housing, specifically the harms of having tall buildings in a neighborhood. They're already tall buildings in Falls Church. You guys did this entire study that's available to everybody, which some people apparently haven't seen, showing the impacts of shadows and how there really aren't going to be any shadows hitting the park or really going into Winter Hill. So I would just like council to think about that For every extra study that you guys require for every another review of a plan for every extra meeting that has to be added, somebody doesn't have an affordable place to live for that much longer. And I understand sometimes it sucks having a large building be built near your house, but you gotta weigh that against somebody not having somewhere where they can afford to live. So I'd really like council to think about that, internalize that, and reflect that in their actions going forward. I have all the faith in the world that council will come to a agreeable resolution to all of this, even if it's not always the one that I prefer myself. Thank you.

Next is Robin Ramey.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR HARDY AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. I'M HERE TONIGHT TO ENCOURAGE THE COUNCIL TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE RFP AS IT'S DRAFTED IN BY-RIGHT FORM. HONESTLY, I CAME TONIGHT, I WAS PREPARED TO TALK ABOUT A LOT BETWEEN BY-RIGHT AND SPECIAL EXCEPTIONS, BUT HONESTLY HEARING A LOT OF THE COMMENTS TONIGHT, I THINK I'M GOING TO PIVOT A LITTLE BIT. I KNOW YOU GUYS HAVE HEARD ME TALK ABOUT THIS A LOT BEFORE, BUT JUST FOR THE BENEFIT OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM, I THINK THAT HOUSING IS PROBABLY, IF NOT THE MOST, ONE OF THE MOST PERSONAL TOPICS THAT LOCAL GOVERNMENT ADDRESSES. OUTSIDE OF HEALTH CARE, WHICH WE DON'T DEAL THAT MUCH WITH, HOUSING IS SO PERSONAL TO EVERYONE. I've heard a lot of emotion in this room tonight, and I just want to say that I'm very incredibly, deeply empathetic to every single person who's in this room who lives in Falls Church, who owns property in Falls Church, and has concerns about what this development might do. But I also want to say, so respecting that, as some folks have mentioned, there are 700, there are hundreds of people. I believe it might be over 700 people waiting on a list just to get the opportunity to live in the city of Falls Church. I personally would not be able to live in the city if it wasn't for affordable housing. AND I THINK THAT WHEN WE WEIGH THE IMPACT OF A 35-PUT SETBACK OR SIX STORIES VERSUS SEVEN STORIES, WHEN YOU WEIGH THAT AND PUT THAT INTO PERSPECTIVE OF WHAT IT MEANS TO ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO LIVE IN A CITY OR NOT, BE ABLE TO INCREASE THE DIVERSITY, BOTH FINANCIAL DIVERSITY AND ALL SORTS OF DIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE AND THE FAMILIES THAT ARE SITTING ON THAT 700-PERSON LONG WAIT LIST, I THINK THAT REALLY PUTS INTO PERSPECTIVE HOW MUCH FIVE-FOOT HEIGHT OR SIX OR SEVEN story difference, you know, one story really makes. And so I just want to say, again, deeply respecting everyone who's in here and feels very personally about their home and about their property that they live in. I want to say that I feel the same way. And so I empathize with that and I understand. But I just want you to consider THAT, AND WEIGH THAT, AND IN CONTRAST TO NOT BEING ABLE TO LIVE IN THIS CITY, NOT BEING ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE AMAZING WALKABLE CITY THAT WE HAVE, THE GREAT SMALL BUSINESSES, ALL THE THINGS THAT MAKE THE CITY GREAT AND THAT MAKE US WANT TO LIVE HERE. THERE'S SO MANY PEOPLE WHO WOULD LIKE TO LIVE HERE, TOO. So anyways, with all that said, I do also support buy right. Hopefully you guys will talk a little bit more about that tonight. But I would encourage the city please to move forward with this tonight without any further delay. I have a little bit of time left. So I also just want to say for again, for the benefit of anyone in the room, if you don't think that the city has taken your comments into consideration, you don't think that the public the process has been public enough I really encourage you to look at the materials from the very first meetings and compare them to what's in front of City Council tonight because I think that you will see lots of comments from the community have been taken into consideration and staff has spent a lot of time to put some very detailed studies together that specifically address those concerns thank you next is Alex just sir

Hi, Council. Thanks for letting me speak. I just want to say, first of all, that I am heartened that at the end of the day, it seems like everyone is on the same page and supports affordable housing. I hear that from both sides. It seems that we have two distinct factions, one that says we support affordable housing, please build it. And one that says we support affordable housing, but and cites myriad reservations of varying logic. The last meeting I attended, the hesitant faction kept citing shadow, shadow over Big Chimney's Park in particular. I live in Winter Hill. I walk through Big Chimney's Park every day. It's on my way to everything. So ever since that meeting, I've been looking, looking for the shadows, seeing if the current quote unquote high rise next to the park casts significant shadow across it. And I haven't really noticed any. I've seen that most of the shade in the park comes from the big trees. that have been growing there for some time, and I presume nobody is in favor of cutting those down. I think that a lot of the concerns that have been cited about this project are of a similar nature. I am really glad that you guys are listening to public comment, and I do want you to take into account everyone's comments. Genuinely, I just hope that they are weighted by logic. And at the end of the day, it's great to know that everyone supports affordable housing. So please build some.

Next is Mary Lou Pickle.

Thank you. Hey. Oh, okay. Dear Mayor and Council, I appreciate the effort you put into your work to make Falls Church a better place. I know it's a lot of work and you don't get a lot of thanks, so thank you for what you do. Since time is short, I would reiterate some of the things you've probably already heard, but when it comes down to it, Winterhill and Virginia Village is a community. And we want to remain a cohesive community. Our kids play together. We look out at each other's houses. We are close. I feel the best way to do that is to make any new development in Virginia Village on the same scale as the one in Winter Hill. So scenario B, three to four story town homes, I think is the way to go. You will achieve affordable housing, which we support. You will preserve and improve the entrance to Big Chimneys Park. uh you won't you know make people run around trying to find how to get into the park all without pursuing the most aggressive development scenario which will significantly disrupt the residents of virginia village and the larger community I think you should go with RFP toward a scale that fits the small amount of land you have assembled. A six- or seven-story building is not the right solution here. It's out of scale. It will dwarf the community and overshow the homes and park. And it's different in the wintertime. The shadows are much longer and last for more months in the winter. As far as process goes, you should set the zoning first before the RFP goes out and the zoning is not ready for prime time. So that should not be voted on tonight. You should also retain your right and power, which is the people's power, to require special exception to make sure you get this project right, because this is an important project. And the zoning is complicated. And try as you might, you may not foresee all that will happen when you make big changes like this. You need to retain your power and authority and not approve a by-right zoning here. Again, please slow down, table this tonight, and get this right. Thank you.

Next is Hussein Ketspur, I believe.

I may be pronouncing that incorrectly.

I'm not sure.

Hussein? Hussein? OK. Next we have Kathy Klyman.

Hi, everybody. I'm Kathy Kleiman, and I'm not part of the Virginia Village or Winter Hill community. I'm a survivor of the West End Park and Founders Road discussions and spent many, many hours at this microphone, I feel like. We all want affordable housing, and we want it in this spot. And to that end, it's a huge win for you and for us. But I'm dismayed by the clear telegraphing that WHAT SEEMS TO BE REQUESTED IS A BIG, UGLY BUILDING. AND THAT DOESN'T, THAT SCENARIO C OF THE RFP, THIS LARGE, DENSE, TALL INFILL, REALLY SHOVING IN A BUILDING WHERE IT DOESN'T BELONG, IT'S LIKE PUTTING A WALL of Founders Row right next to the park or right next to the townhouses that are currently two-story townhouses. It doesn't work. We wouldn't have allowed that to happen in the West End. You wouldn't have allowed that to happen in the East End. And it shouldn't be happening in Virginia Village and Winter Hill, which is why if you take off scenario c you've got something really workable a and b are excellent a is keeping the current buildings and renovating them but b frankly i think is even better because you can create infill of the same structural aesthetics that this blended preservation make it higher make it denser but everybody in in the community will be able to breathe they'll all be able to see the park There'll be lots and lots of housing for families and no one's going to feel like they're stuck in the big ugly building because that's going to create real differences in the neighborhood because people will know they've been shoved into the big ugly building and that that's where the affordable housing is versus being in brick buildings of a size and a density, maybe a little higher, maybe a little wider, but that are keeping with the community feel and structure. You don't want people in affordable housing to feel different. We don't want a Cabrini Green of Chicago. It's not a project. We want these people to be active parts of our community. So you have better options. Take C, take the big ugly building off the table and stick with A and B and revise them for the blended preservation that you have in so many beautiful materials. And I'm also going to urge you to really open up the process. I could be wrong, but I understand the RFPs are not going to be transparent. Those of you who have been around for a while will remember that initially we were going to do RFPs for the high school that were not transparent. They've got secrets in them. They've got costs. we demanded that they be transparent that the process be transparent because it was our land our building our high school and we opened it up and we said no secret rfps again i'm not sure exactly what you're doing here but if it has anything to do with secrecy please make it open and transparent because we own the land you and i and we all in the land so goodbye to option c and let's really open up this process so everyone can be involved because that's where we get the best decisions and the best buildings thank you

next is laura gogol laura gogol hi city council thank you for hearing our comments i i'm just coming to the process and trying to understand i don't live in the winter hill area i live sort of in the same area that kathy kleinman is talking about over by founders row but i i'm trying to understand how we could be issuing an RFP when the zoning is just on first reading. So I'm hoping somebody tonight will speak to that, explain why we would issue an RFP before the zoning is determined. And I also just know, as an attorney who does a lot of work with RFPs for my own organization, that you get locked in by your RFPs. too often. Many a time, an RFP, what things you don't include, things you do include, really end up locking you in. And so I do worry that if we haven't had a full enough process yet to be sure the RFP includes things like location of handicapped ramps or how we're going to deal with setbacks and other things like that, that it will be very hard once those come back to make those changes or to get those concessions from the developers who submit proposals so i do think it's really worth i mean i don't know what the rush is and why we need to do the rfp tonight maybe again someone can speak to that because i haven't really been as engaged in this process i've just learned about it recently but i worry that by issuing the rfp tonight the city is not serving the citizens, the city. Well, I think we should be doing a process that makes sure we're covering everything effectively before we lock ourselves in. You know, we don't have very many of these parcels. This is a rare opportunity. I don't know why we don't take the time we need to make sure we're doing it correctly. So thank you.

Next is Abram Mark Massey.

Good evening and thank you for letting us talk to you. What I wanted to say, I'm going to read this a little bit, then I might add just a bit. I want to express my support for the modifications suggested to the small area plan by Rebecca Johnson. These modifications directly and coherently inform any further community development activity in that area. To me, it is extremely strange that a zoning process will occur after a request for proposal. In essence, what is being done here is, hey, developers, we want some affordable housing, but don't let the zoning questions bother you. We will rig the zoning for whatever we consider the most favorable bid. And by the way, who exactly is we in the last sentence? At this point, that appears to be a closed group of individuals with little to no citizens input nor citizen oversight. Note that this RFP is use of city-owned land paid for by city taxes, by citizen taxes. Further, many of the future residents of this community will be receiving city-provided rent support. In other words, our taxes will be paying for people's rent, and all of this without public citizen involvement in RFP approval process. Two, this whole affair is being rushed through such that it is extensively, extremely difficult for local citizens who work and create the money for these projects through their taxes to have enough time to review these materials and impact their creation and thus control the future of their community. This city has gone far too long with nearly unbridled development. Apparently, among real estate developers and proponents, Falls Church should have the skyline of Roslyn or Crystal City. Falls Church is losing its ability to claim it is the nicest little city near Washington, D.C. Please slow this development down to ensure that the citizens, not real estate developers, control who and what we are. Finally, I want to say if you're going to push the RFP through, please remove option C. I, too, was part of the process of putting or accepting the huge monster that was originally being built near my home at West and I'm sorry for your moment there. AT WEST AND GROVE AVENUE. SO IT TOOK ONE HECK OF A LOT OF WORK TO GET THAT BUILDING TO SOMETHING THAT CITIZENS COULD ACCEPT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

THE FINAL SPEAKER SLIP WE HAVE IS FOR ROHINI WINTERS.

Good evening, Mayor Hardy, members of the City Council. We spend a lot of time trying to teach our kids if it sounds too good to be true, if they're trying to rush you into a decision, slow down, take the take the time to evaluate anybody that wants you to sign an agreement same day, next day, within two days on a hard deadline. is probably not serving your best interests. So I'm here tonight to ask you to slow down once again, as I did during Founders Row development stages, so that the community, the city, and the citizens as a whole can have the time to make proper public input and and there have been lots of meetings with the residents close in but the rest of the city has not had much opportunity yet to weigh in on how this project comes to to our view you should change your rfp to a request for in information if you want industry PARTICIPATION IN THE PROCESS. USE THE TOOLS THAT YOU HAVE WITHOUT PUTTING A SOLICITATION OUT FOR A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS THAT WILL, IN FACT, LOCK YOU IN TO SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT CHOOSE. DO A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. GET INDUSTRIES QUESTIONS, INPUTS, IDEAS, AS WELL AS THE CITIZENRY TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS WHOLE PROCESS. ASK FOR REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION ON YOUR SCENARIOS A AND B. TAKE THE BIG UGLY BUILDING OFF THE TABLE. IT DOESN'T FIT IN THE LITTLE CITY. I LOVE HOW KATHY SPOKE ABOUT WE DON'T WANT TO CREATE DIFFERENCES WITHIN OUR COMMUNITY. AS BEST WE CAN, WE SHOULD BE WORKING TOWARDS INCLUSION. And we spent a lot of time on Jesse Thackery so that we wouldn't disrupt that neighborhood with a preschool that was too big or too anything. We spent a lot of time on Founders Row. We made significant changes and we made the project better. I think we have the opportunity to do the same thing for Virginia Village and the Winter Hill. Thank you for your time.

And that was our last speaker that we have a slip for.

Great. Thank you. Thank you for all the public comments. When we get to the items on the looks like we have one latecomer.

Hello. My name is Mark Rest. I'll keep this very short. You've heard a lot. There is a lot of support, but there's a lot of concern that this is being done that the schedule is motivated by things other than what's in the best interest of the city and the community. There's a lot of support for affordable housing. There's a lot of support for affordable housing throughout the city. There's a lot of concern about mass, you know, affordable housing, this option C, that kind of thing. And so regarding the RFP process, since it's public land involving public redevelopment, the public needs a meaningful role. And before a preferred developer is chosen, the public should have an opportunity to understand the basic options, meaningful summaries of what's being proposed, and understand the tradeoffs and provide input. You've been hearing this tonight. I know you have. And so thank you. I hope you're listening. I'm done.

Thank you for all the public comment, especially joining us on a stormy evening. After we get through the manager's report to the council, we'll get to business on the agenda and we'll see if there's other public comments that we receive officially. I know we have a couple of resolutions and ordinances and no public hearings officially, but given the interest in this topic, if there's further public comment, I will take public comment later on as well. So with that, let's move on to the manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor Hardy, members of council, members of the community. Just one thing to report tonight, and that is to once again note that we'll celebrate Independence Day in the city of Falls Church on Friday, July 3rd. And everyone is welcome at 6 p.m. till 10 p.m., where we'll have a civic jam. This is part of our 250th celebration and our 250th committee, as well as our city staff have worked together with community to plan event to bring together so many of our community organizations where they'll share information about the great work that's being done in the community along with a beer tent, live music, and lots of fun and games. So everybody's invited on Friday, July 3rd for our Civic Jam. That's all I have to report tonight. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Will you be riding the mechanical bull?

Yes.

Is that true?

If there is one.

BEFORE I OPEN UP TO COUNCIL REQUESTS, WHILE WE STILL HAVE A FULL HOUSE, I WAS TAKING COPIOUS NOTES DURING PUBLIC COMMENT, BUT I WANTED TO MAKE SURE WHILE WE STILL HAD A FULL HOUSE, THERE WAS ONE COMMENT THAT STOOD OUT TO ME FROM MS. WARNOCK, WHO IS AN OWNER OF ONE OF THE NON-CITY OWNED QUADS, AND SO I WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE TAKE THAT TIME TO DISPEL ANY MISUNDERSTANDINGS BECAUSE I THINK MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE ZONING OVERLAY THAT'S PROPOSED IS DIFFERENT THAN HERS, AND I THINK IT WAS IMPORTANT ENOUGH THAT I WANTED TO BRING IT UP IN THE COUNCIL REQUEST AND USE THAT OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS WHILE WE HAD AN AUDIENCE HERE, AND THEN WE CAN GET TO OUR NORMAL COUNCIL REQUEST. SO IF I COULD ASK MR. SHIELDS FOR YOU TO COMMENT ON THAT. I THINK HER CONCERN, IF I JOT IT DOWN MY NOTE CORRECTLY, WAS THAT THE CHANGES WE ARE DISCUSSING WOULD RESTRICT HER CURRENT PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THAT IS incorrect because it's just proposed to be an overlay and so the buy right zoning that they have underneath still remains and the overlay provides an option for them to access that they want it but i'll let you all chime in well so first um let me just offer ms warnock and in any of the property owners in virginia village we can meet in person you know on site or in our you know uh

to meet just to talk through all the details in detail. The residents and property owners of Virginia Village are really crucial to this whole effort, and we've had a lot of outreach with the owners and with the people who live there, and we want to continue to do that every step of the process. As the Mayor noted, what is proposed tonight for first reading is an overlay district. And so for the current uses or the current zoning for the property, if people don't want to make any changes to the property, the current rule, the current rules stay in effect. And what the overlay will do, however, is if owners want to access to redevelop their property or expand their property, there are new rules that would be associated with that relative to the existing zoning, which right now is either a MER overlay or the RM zoning. And so we can go through kind of what all that means. But tonight, during the staff presentation, we'll talk about what the sort of the guardrails are for development that's proposed in this overlay district and also what are the tests that have to be met in order to access higher density on these properties.

Great. Thank you for that clarification. And again, as you said, we believe that making sure that Virginia Village is engaged and informed along the way is important. I appreciate the work of staff to have dedicated meetings with the residents and with adjacent neighbors as well. So that was my council request, but I'll open it up to the rest of council for their requests as well. Mr. Reagan.

On completely different topics, real quick. One, I want to second the public comment we received about interest in where we stand with Park Avenue and not only the process, I think in a future meeting we'd like to get an update as far as where that stands as well as, or Park Avenue Great Streets, as well as any quick fixes from that that are going to be implemented. The other one I want to bring up is I understand there was another accident on Grove at the W&OD. There seems to have been a surge of several accidents and I was hoping you could talk to that situation and what we're doing to address that crossing because I think it's now three or four in the last two months or something like that where a bicyclist has been hit by a car.

So, yes. So staff and the CACT discussed the Grove and W&OD crossing at their meeting last week. Staff has and the Nova Parks have a series of changes that either have already been made or are in process of being made. One that the city will do is to move some of the parking regulations a little further from the trail to the extent that parked vehicles might be blocking some of the visibility for users of the trail. And we're planning to have some enhanced markings for the trail. Right now the aesthetic treatment of the trail was a little bit before we have the other crossings. And so we are looking for a brighter treatment so that the trail is more visible. We have looked at a stop sign for vehicles at the trail. That is under study, but it is so close to the other intersection that under sort of normal rules for stop sign placement, that would not be a warranted stop sign. So that's our initial assessment, but we'll have more details on changes we'll make at that location.

Hopefully we'll be able to get some stuff in place pretty quickly, and also maybe flexi posts that narrow the roadway there, something that we can do very quickly because it's becoming a real problem. It's been a real problem, and we're going to end up with a fatality.

I was going to ask for kind of a related request, because I know that the CACT does discuss this extensively with public works at their meeting two weeks ago. And so if staff could just send out a summary of what's being proposed, because I think it was a combination of Nova Parks putting in some rumble strips and extra signage. I think Public Works, albeit does not include that extra stop sign, did have a bunch of recommendations they talked through with CACT. That would probably be helpful for council to know as well. And then likewise, they covered Annandale and Gundry extensively as well, including proposing a mini roundabout. When I watched the meeting, I thought that was a pretty interesting idea. to help encourage stop sign adherence at that intersection. So thank you to Public Works for moving quickly on both of those and following it up after doing some data collection.

I just want to piggyback on that as well. I think you're right, Mr. Shields, it would be awkward to have a stop sign if you're coming off west onto Grove because you're right there. But if you're coming from the Fairfax side down Grove that way, I actually just went down that the other day after running an errand and was trying to look. I was like, you could do a stop sign just on that side. I mean, that would... That would be okay. I think it's awkward coming from the other direction because you're coming right off west and to have a stop sign right there, and that would, I think, mess up traffic. But you could do it the other way, coming from the Fairfax side, just a thought. If it's okay, Mayor, if I could just jump in because this is sort of related for my council request. I received an inquiry from a parent who was on the trail, and I know this is something we've discussed before, but about the electric jerk dirt bikes and so I know this is something that all that all of our surrounding jurisdictions are dealing with and it's very hard to Kind of get a handle on this my understanding from the mayor It's that chief Fard has has stepped up enforcement and confiscated some of these bikes but I'm wondering if maybe at some point we could get an update from chief Fard and terms of enforcement what's what you know is there something the council can do you know does he need some more resources to tackle this so because I think the problem is only going to get worse especially this summer with kids out of school and everything yeah we'll follow up with that thank you a quick comment on that when I was overseas I'll tell you it's not a US problem it's worldwide they're around everywhere

other council requests. Mr. Snyder.

Again, while folks are here, one of the consistent comments we got about the proposed RFP is the failure of public transparency. Can we just review very quickly for people the opportunities for public input in this process going forward? I think it's absolutely fundamental. We can talk about the details later, and I'm sure we will, and we'll take additional comments if people want to make them. I think what's important to me is the transparency of the proposed process, both the zoning and RFP.

Well, I'll try to be concise on this because we'll talk about this in detail in just a moment. With the RFP, responses are due in early August. For each of the proposals, there will be an executive summary and those will be made public. The reason that an RFP under Virginia procurement law, there are confidential aspects to it, is so that the proposers can feel confident that they can submit their best work to the city for evaluation and not have their ideas or their concepts or their financial plans taken by their competitors. And so that's sort of the nature of a competitive process. It is beneficial ultimately to the public and to the city. But that's the rules of a RFP process. Once the evaluation committee has done its work, they will provide its recommendations to the city council. The city council will get all of that information And then there'll be opportunities for further public information out kind of in those later stages. And it can either be, you know, with sort of the finalist having a public presentation before an interim agreement is signed. That is a process that's allowed under the RFP process. And then ultimately, The idea of having this happen at the same time that the zoning rules are being considered is so that the zoning rules are words on the paper and graphics that are kind of very necessarily very simple. But with the proposal in hand, then you can see how those rules are being met in a project that someone thinks they can actually finance and get built. And it's very, I think, important for the community to be able to see that before any final decisions are made, and there'll be that opportunity to do that. And so that's a couple of comments just on the process, and we'll talk more about it in just a moment.

Yeah, what I was going toward, and let me just follow up, is the points in the process where citizens will have information and be able to comment. There are quite a number of points in the process, and I wondered if you could summarize those. I'm speaking now of transparency and what the public will know, when they will know it, and what their opportunities are to comment. both the zoning and the RFP process.

Well, I mean, I can invite Matt to come forward and speak to it in more detail. I gave a concise overview of it.

Right, right. What I'm going is transparency. What will the public know? When will they know it? And what will be their opportunities to input to the council?

And just to be clear, we're discussing the RFP process? Pardon? Not the zoning changes.

You're asking about the RFP process itself?

Yes, and the zoning process.

The zoning is a wide open public process every step of the way. The only thing that under law there are some requirements that there's a confidential period to it is the RFP. And so in August, the executive summaries are released to the public. So there's a baseline of information so the public knows what the evaluation committee is looking at, who's responded, that's clear, sort of the basic concepts that are being proposed. All of that information would be in the executive summary. then the evaluation process is done in a closed manner. And that's that's a requirement of the process that we're following here. And then once that evaluation is completed and there's a recommendation of the city council, then the city council prior to its making its final decision can provide additional information. The proposer can make a public presentation so that the public understands what the council is looking at as they're considering an interim agreement with that top-ranked respondent.

And the key point I want to make is before the city council makes that decision, the public will have information and they'll have input into the process, right? Where I'm going is when will citizens have critical information and when will they have an opportunity to address the council and or the planning commission in the process? It's not a loaded question. I'm just trying to lay out where it is, and I think there are extensive opportunities during the zoning process, and quickly review those, right? Here tonight, depending on what we do, again, a set of public hearings went on second reading, which may go back to first, but it may continue on to second. With the RFP, before the City Council makes a decision on the RFP, information will be available to the public and there'll be a public hearing and opportunity for input to the council before we make the decision. Is that right? That is right. Okay. This is where I'm going. It's just steps in the way, along the way to make sure that the public has a lot of opportunities to A, have information, and B, have input into our decision-making process.

Specifically, the timelines, my understanding is that the RFP responses are due end of July. The evaluation committee would be working kind of in the early to mid part of August. I think we've talked about similar to the high school RFP process, asking the people who respond to give some sort of high level presentation, so no proprietary information, but be able to give some sort of community update so people are aware. So that can probably happen in August, early September. I think it's scheduled right now to come in front of us in early September. and that'll be another public discussion opportunity then. Is that correct in line with what you guys are planning?

Correct. And we are also maintaining a project website. All this information is going to be regularly posted there, kind of a one-stop shop to track materials, updated schedules. I know that's usually making things a little bit easier than to track council meeting agendas, which is sometimes more difficult. So, we have a dedicated website and we're going to continue to use it over the next few months.

Can I just ask a follow-up question on that? This feels or sounds different to me than how I understood some of our prior conversations. So in terms of what the public can understand in response to what Mr. Snyder's question was, if we get 25 proposals, let's say, are we saying we in the RFP have a five-page Executive summary that we are committing at this point to putting 25 five page summaries up and taking public comment on those when we have a evaluation committee through the RFP process that is supposed to be. RANK ORDERING. I WANT TO UNDERSTAND SORT OF THE PROCUREMENT PROCESS VERSUS WHAT IT IS THAT WE'RE OPENING UP OR SEEMINGLY COMMITTING TO IN TERMS OF A PUBLIC PROCESS, BECAUSE I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THOSE THE SAME WAY. SO ARE WE PUTTING UP 125 PAGES WORTH OF PROPOSALS? OR ARE WE POTENTIALLY PUTTING UP THE TOP THREE? Five-page proposals that come out of the EAC. So, like, let's just be careful at this point on what it is we're saying is happening, and are we actually committing to those five-page summaries going up for 25 different projects?

So, I would suggest we get to the items so we can go through them in an orderly way. I feel like we're sort of responding probably a little bit in an ad hoc way. I will say this. The executive summaries are intended to be public. Whether the council chooses to have a public hearing on them or not, that's not part of the process. We're not anticipating that. But there is a desire that the public knows what the evaluation committee is looking at in terms of the number of submittals and a summary of what's in them.

Okay.

Thanks.

And I know I'm not trying to, but just to make it clear also, this evaluation committee will only have one member of council on it. and some citizens on this council. So I know we have to we have to figure out who those exact individuals are. But just to be clear to the public, it's just one member of council and then I think I believe a staff and then a couple citizens on that council on that recommendation.

And the citizens would be a representative of the Housing Commission, representative of the Planning Commission, representative of the Economic Development Authority, representative of the City Council. That is the and then and then staff, that would be the evaluation committee.

Thank you. Thank you. So we were on council requests. Any other council requests before we clearly all want to get to business on the agenda? OK, I have a final one. So similar to the public comment about great street status, if we can get update on that. But specifically, I'm very interested in whether we can do any quick build projects at Park and Maple. I continue to observe kind of near misses there today because of that misaligned intersection that doesn't have great sight lines. And I know that as part of Great Streets, we have engineering plans actually realign it and straighten it out. And so if Great Streets is still several years away, that feels like a great candidate for a quick build project with flexi posts and paint and help increase pedestrian safety and reduce car accidents there.

And validate what would be poured in concrete as part of Great Streets.

Yes, and a good test of the great street design. So if staff could get updates on that, that would be great. So let's move on to business on the agenda. Madam Clerk, can you call the first item, please?

TR 26-23 is a resolution to adopt amendments to the downtown and South Washington Street small area plans related to land use, zoning, and related guidance for the Virginia Village area.

And I would recommend, Council, with your agreement that we go ahead and read all four of the items and then go to other business and also read the RFP item E1, the motion to approve the authorization to issue the RFP so that all five could be considered at the same time. Is that the Council's desire? That's fine with me. Each will be a separate vote, but they would be the staff report could be unified.

All right, here we go. TR26-24 is a resolution to amend the City of Falls Church Comprehensive Plan Chapter 4 Addendum, Revitalization Areas, Small Area Plans, and Urban Development Areas in order to relocate the following parcels out of Planning Opportunity Area 5, City Center Downtown, and into Planning Opportunity Area 6, South Washington Street Corridor 202, gibson street rpc number 52-309-002 204 gibson street rpc number 52-309-003 206 gibson street rpc number 52-309-004 and 208 gibson street rpc number 52-309-005 AND TO INCORPORATE BY REFERENCE ALL SMALL AREA PLANS ADOPTED BY CITY COUNCIL INTO CHAPTER 4 OF THE CITY'S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. TO 26-18 IS AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND THE OFFICIAL ZONING MAP OF THE CITY OF FALLS CHURCH TO REMOVE THE MIXED USE REDEVELOPMENT ONE DESIGNATION FROM APPROXIMATELY 4.5 ACRES OF LAND LOCATED AT 202 GIBSON STREET REAL PROPERTY NUMBER 52-309-002. 204 Gibson Street, Real Property Number 52-309-003. 206 Gibson Street, Real Property Number 52-309-004. 208 Gibson Street, Real Property Number 52-309-005. 300 Shirley Street, Real Property Number 52-309-007. 302 Shirley Street, Real Property Number 52-309-008. 304 Shirley Street, Real Property Number 52-309-009. 306 Shirley Street, Real Property Number 52-309-010. 308 Shirley Street real property number 52-309-011 310 Shirley Street real property number 52-309-012 312 Shirley Street real property number 52-309-013 307 Shirley Street real property number 52-309-14 305 SHIRLEY STREET REAL PROPERTY NUMBER 52-309-015. 303 SHIRLEY STREET REAL PROPERTY NUMBER 52-309-016. 300 SOUTH MAPLE AVENUE REAL PROPERTY NUMBER 52-309-017. 302 South Maple Avenue, Real Property Number 52-309-018. 304 South Maple Avenue, Real Property Number 52-309-019. 306 South Maple Avenue, Real Property Number 52-309-020. 308 South Maple Avenue, 52-309-021. AND 310 SOUTH MAPLE AVENUE REAL PROPERTY NUMBER 52-309-022 AND TO ADD THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE OVERLAY DISTRICT DESIGNATION TO THE SAME PARCELS. TO 26-15 IS AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND CITY CODE CHAPTER 48 ZONING ARTICLE 5 SUPPLEMENTARY REGULATIONS DIVISION 3 RESERVE TO ADD REGULATIONS GOVERNING THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE OVERLAY ZONING DISTRICT AND TO AMEND DIVISIONS 4 AND 5 BY RENUMBERING TO DIVISION 4. THE CONTENT OF THE EXISTING DIVISION FIVE MIXED USE REDEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS AND RENUMBERING TO DIVISION FIVE THE CONTENT OF THE EXISTING DIVISION FOUR FILLING STATIONS AND REQUIRED AND PUBLIC GARAGES AND TO AMEND DIVISION SEVEN SITE PLANS SECTION 48-1137 REQUIRED INFORMATION SUBSECTION FIVE TO ALLOW EXCEPTIONS FOR CERTAIN DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE ZONING OVERLAY DISTRICT. Item 10E1 is a motion to authorize the purchasing agent or authorized designee to issue a request for proposals for the Virginia Village affordable housing opportunity.

Thank you to our Deputy Clerk. I think you skipped TR 26-23, the first one.

I think we read that one first, and then that's when I suggested that we read all of them. Did you read that before you?

Yeah, I read that prior to him asking for them to be together, so.

And so, if we could, I'll just make a few introductory comments, then I'll turn it over to our lead planner on this, on the, small area plan update and the comp plan update, Zoe Larive. But just in terms of an introduction for the public's information, over the past five years, the city has been seeking to acquire quadplexes in the Virginia Village neighborhood. The purpose of these acquisitions has been to preserve the affordability of housing and potentially to expand the amount of affordable housing IN THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE AREA. IN THE PAST FALL, THE CITY COUNCIL ADOPTED THE AFFORDABLE LIVING POLICY WHICH WE DO EVERY FIVE YEARS AND IT ONCE AGAIN DOCUMENTED THE GAPS OF HOUSING ACCESSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THE CITY OR FOR PEOPLE WHO SEEK TO HAVE HOUSING IN THE CITY FOR ANY REASON. And the affordable living policy also set goals and strategies for how the city could close some of those gaps. Virginia Village has been identified by the city as an opportunity to take a small step towards achieving some of those adopted policy goals. In the past several months, our planning staff and our housing staff have engage with community on an update to the comprehensive plan as it lays out a vision for the Virginia Village neighborhood. And Ms. Larive will discuss some of the outcomes of those community engagements and how they show up in the proposed amendments to those plans. Very importantly, we've also engaged with the residents of the Virginia Village neighborhood, both the owners and the occupants of the housing there that will be potentially the most impacted by any changes that are being considered tonight. The work on the small area plans and the comp plans and the zoning is intended to help meet the policy goals of the affordable living plan for expanding access to housing in a way that fits attractively within its neighborhood context. So in terms of the five things that our deputy clerk just read out, the first two relate to updates to the comprehensive plan. So for the public, those updates are the broad vision for Virginia Village. Then the next two items, which will be led by Jack Traynor, are zoning amendments. And so the first is a zoning map amendment to create the Virginia Village overlay district and to repeal the MER, the mixed use redevelopment overlay for this neighborhood. And then the zoning text amendment lays out the rules for redevelopment in that district. And again, with the overlay concept, if an owner doesn't want to make any changes to their property, the existing zoning rules stay in effect and these rules could be used and accessed to them in the future at such time as they might want to redevelop their property in the future. And then the last item will be handled by our planning director, Matt Matusik, and that is the RFP itself. And the intent of that is to bring in the affordable housing community and the development community to bring their ideas into what the future for Virginia Village could look like. The intent of that RFP, however, is very serious. The intent is ultimately to enter into an agreement with the top-ranked respondent And in that agreement, there would be a path forward for how this property, the affordable housing in this neighborhood will either be preserved under scenario A, expanded with sort of lower density redevelopment in scenario B, or some of the higher density option that's laid out in scenario C. The steps on that, Matt will kind of walk us through the details of kind of how that process would work. So we'll kick things off with Ms. Lareve for the comp plan updates first.

Thank you. Thank you for that very well-structured summary of the project. I am going to mainly focus on the small area plan and a little bit the comprehensive plan, and then we'll turn it over to my colleague Jack to focus more on the zoning elements. Thank you. all right so to start I want to do a quick outline of the upcoming schedule in a broad sense so tonight we have the City Council action slash first reading on the comprehensive plan and small area plan amendments the zoning ordinance amendments and the RFP we have a tentative work session with planning commission coming up on july 1st and then we are tentatively setting our planning commission public hearing and recommend and hopeful recommendation for july 15th for the comp plan and sap amendments and then the city council public hearing and final consideration for july 27th for the comp plan and sap amendments the zoning amendments will be considered further down the line in Q3. Okay. To look back a little bit at some of the engagement that we have conducted in the course of this project, we had a preliminary scoping period in January to March where we had six meetings with a variety of different groups that you can see listed out, including THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE RESIDENTS. WE THEN MOVED IN MARCH 2026 TO THE VISIONING RECONCILIATION, WHICH FEATURED TWO COMMUNITY MEETINGS, ONE ON THE WEEKEND AND ONE ON A WEEK NIGHT, AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL MEETINGS WITH WINTER HILL TWO OF THE WINTER HILL COMMUNITIES. THE THIRD ENGAGEMENT PERIOD WAS IN APRIL WHERE WE CAME BACK WITH SOME OF THE SAP CODE AMENDMENT SCOPING REVIEW WHERE WE HAD TWO MORE COMMUNITY MEETINGS AS WELL AS A MEETING WITH VIRGINIA VILLAGE RESIDENTS AND OTHER PUBLIC MEETINGS. WE ARE NOW IN THE FOURTH STAGE OF THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WHICH IS BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS WHICH HAS BEEN GOING ON FROM MAY TO JULY WHERE WE'VE HAD FIVE DIFFERENT MEETINGS WITH BOTH CITY BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS AS WELL AS RESIDENT BOARDS AND OTHER GROUPS. NOT FEATURED EXPLICITLY ON THE SLIDE ARE OTHER ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES WE'VE HAD SUCH AS HAVING A PUBLIC E-MAIL WHERE WE'VE BEEN OPEN TO RESPONDING TO QUESTIONS. WE'VE ALSO HAD A online feedback form and a few other different ways to engage and hope to continue that engagement going forward. All right. Next is a slide. If anyone's been to any of these meetings, they've seen before. This is kind of just a generalization of how planning relates to zoning, specifically how the comprehensive plan is the most general. It is the most overarching. It covers citywide. Then we get a little more specific into the small area plans. So for this project, we're talking about the SOUTH WASHINGTON SMALL AREA PLAN SPECIFICALLY. THOSE ARE DESIGNATED PLANNING OPPORTUNITY AREAS, WHICH WERE SET IN THE 2005 COMP PLAN. FINALLY, THE MOST SPECIFIC ELEMENT IS THE ZONING ORDINANCE, AND THAT IS SITE SPECIFIC, AND IT AIMS TO ADVANCE THE GOALS THAT ARE INCLUDED IN THE COMP PLAN AND THE SMALL AREA PLANS. OK, continuing forward to the small area plan amendments specifically. The objectives of these amendments are to update the vision for the future of the Virginia Village site to incorporate community input and the goals set forth in the affordable living policy. We are also aiming to update some of the formatting, visuals, maps, and references to resolve some of the accessibility issues and to add major projects that have been completed or approved in the area since the plan's adoption. to keep this pretty brief on the small area plans because the the zoning seems to be a bit of the meatier item i just wanted to include two of the responses to some of the city council comments from last week's work session specifically what is the best practice for undergoing major updates or rewrites to small area plans is there a specific time frame or for these holistic updates given that this is a very limited update that we are working on now. There's a range of different best practices that could be from specific year-long cycles, 10 years, 15, 5. They could also be triggered by major changes like economic or demographic shifts. They could also be updated based on the progress made towards the goals in the plan, so setting a specific limit. I wanted to also highlight that we have added additional language referring to the significance of the timing and style of Virginia Village housing as a significant symbol of the city of Falls Church history. Okay, and to quickly go through the comprehensive plan chapter four amendment so the Objective of this are to adjust these South Washington Street planning opportunity area to include the four Gibson Street properties of Virginia Village and to formally incorporate the small area plans as part of chapter four of the comprehensive plan and So here you can see an amended version of the planning opportunity areas that is just moving those four properties into the South Washington Street corridor and out of the downtown POA. And with that, I will pause for any questions or comments.

Thank you, Ms. Larrief. Any questions or comments on the small area plan changes? Looks like Ms. Connolly does.

I DO. THANK YOU, MS. HARDY, AND THANK YOU, MS. LARIEVE. AS I WAS READING THIS WHEN IT ALL CAME OUT LAST WEEK, I WAS, I WENT THROUGH THE SOUTH WASHINGTON AREA PLAN AND FOUND SEVERAL SMALL TYPOS, AND I SENT A MESSAGE TO CITY MANAGER OFFICE AS WELL AS TO MR. MATUSZC JUST TO ASK IF THEY COULD BE INCORPORATED WITHOUT HAVING TO GO OVER LINE BY LINE THE APOSTROPHES AND OTHER THINGS. DID YOU GET THAT MESSAGE?

We did. And I think our thought was if we could make those changes between now and the 27th, that would be our intention. Okay. Okay.

They really were just like just, you know, typos and things like that.

And then my second. Thank you for that.

Yep. And then my second was with the downtown area plan. That one, as you just said, doesn't have many changes. But the one thing that stood out to me is that all of the maps are now wrong. So I'm wondering if there's a way to say in there at the very beginning, and maybe I missed it and you already did, that we're not going to redo all these maps because there are 15 or 20 maps in here. But just to note that this one area on Gibbs Street is no longer in this plan.

Yes, the plan is to Note that where needed but to also hopefully update some of the plans to meet some of the new accessibility standards Okay, especially some of the ones if you look at the formatting just over the years the past 13 I think years since it was adopted They're not some things gone amiss and they're not very readable if if they are showing up at all So yes, that's the plan. Okay

that's great that's great as i looked at it i started to say oh this map needs to get fixed and then i turn the page and there's another another another another so thank you thank you for that very good thanks any other final comments just one real quick one that that reminded me of um the downtown small area plan obviously we're removing the gibson street items from there and any reference do we need to be dealing with that one as well or is that going to come at a later date

anything where those the small updates to say it where we just remove the Gibson stuff out of there that is part of this update and I believe in the attachments there's a redlined version that just is removing all of the references to the Virginia Village site and those four properties There may be additional cleanups as we continue to move forward, just to specify that this process took place, that these parts, these pieces of the original plan were removed. Just small, limited updates like that.

Okay. Not really finding it, but okay. Yeah, I see the link, but it's fine.

There's only a few references pretty far down. Mr. Snyder.

Yeah, just to go over the process here, because I think it's important for the public to understand their opportunities. So what we're saying tonight, if we vote for this, it will go to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission will have a public hearing on it. and then it will come back to us for final decision with another public hearing. Is that correct?

That is correct for the small area plan amendments and the comprehensive plan amendment only. Right.

And another question. I failed to jot down which item it's in, but there was a reference to a 2.5 floor area ratio. Was that in zoning? Was that in any of these proposals?

I do not know off the top of my head. I believe that we have not included any new FAR-specific language in the small area plans at this point. We plan on adding a generalized section about the Virginia Village overlay zoning district as that process moves forward. We wanted to wait until this first reading goes through to make sure we are

capturing the general essence of the overlay district because a floor area ratio would have significant impact on the density of the development so I just want to make sure that that's thoroughly discussed before we put anything in there on that thank you okay I guess if there's no further questions or comments

I'll pass it off to Jack Phoenix who will continue with the zoning elements. Okay.

Welcome. Good evening. Jack Trainor, senior planner with the city. I'm going to be taking over here for Zoe. I'm talking about the zoning text amendments, the latest draft of the proposed Virginia Village overlay district. I guess I have the remote. So the again, this is a request for first reading following tonight's first reading vote. If passed, this would then come back. This was laid dormant for a little while throughout the RFP process and come back for further public meetings in quarter three of this year. Just want to make that point up front. And so we've got a couple updates to the proposal since Council last saw this a couple weeks ago or maybe a week ago. Those are highlighted in gray. And then in the red, we've noted kind of where the proposal began and then comparing that to, you know, based on the feedback we've heard continuously throughout this process and between that first draft that came out on June 3rd, the proposal has kind of evolved with that feedback we've received. So beginning with building scale density transitions, the only kind of new things here is that we've clarified that within 150 feet of Gundry Drive properties, there would be a cap on any redevelopment height of four stories or 40 feet. And that is kind of further codified in a diagram that I'll move to next that shows some other kind of height caps that is included in the proposal. I'm jumping ahead of myself here. Giving everyone a sneak peek. Okay. THIS GRAPHIC IS IN THE PROPOSED CODE WHICH SHOWS DIFFERENT KIND OF ZONES THAT WOULD DICTATE THE HEIGHT LIMITS ACROSS VIRGINIA VILLAGE, AND THIS WOULD WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE PROPOSED BULK PLAIN. AND SO YOU CAN SEE THE PROPERTIES ON THE KIND OF NORTHWEST SIDE OF SHIRLEY STREET THAT ABUT GUNDRY DRIVE. THOSE WOULD BE CAPTED THREE TO FOUR STORIES, AND WHERE THAT the bulk plane would still dictate, right? So if you're close enough after the setbacks to not go above four stories because the bulk plane, because you rub up against the bulk plane, then you'd be capped at three stories or whatever height limit that you reach the bulk plane, but you wouldn't be permitted to go above four stories. And so that same concept carries throughout the rest of the Virginia Village to the five to six stories and the kind of island there on the south side of Shirley Street and then six to seven stories on fronting South Maple Avenue. This is, you know, further protections for protecting or creating that kind of transitional Zone and intensity in heights from the single family neighborhood, Winter Hill, Gundry Drive to that commercial area of South Maple Avenue. So continuing with building scale and density transitions, I'm going to focus mainly on the setbacks here. That's in that top central box. That's where most of the gray area is. So the latest proposal, again, considering the feedback we've heard most recently, has adjusted some of the setbacks to include a 15-foot setback from Shirley Street and any abutting commercial zone property. So thinking the thinking there was there was a lot of discussion about the north side of Shirley Street properties, those that abut Winter Hill, but those properties that also abut Shirley Street on the south side that are subject to higher heights, that six five to six story zone. might consider a slightly larger setback than was than what was previously considered. I think that was at 10. And then on South Maple Avenue, this kind of jumped around the last couple of proposals. I think originally it was 10 and then we went to 20 feet. But consistent with the again, the feedback we heard about maybe shortening the front setback to alleviate the rear development side a little bit and also stay consistent with the streetscape standards that were adopted in 2017 that's been adjusted to an 18 foot setback on South Maple Avenue. And then sticking with the internal R districts, so any property abutting an internal residential district, which is pretty much, it's everything but the Gibson Street properties, they're all zoned RM, multifamily, would be subject to a 20-foot setback on any side of the property that abuts or touches that residential district. And then lastly, the the the rear setback on the Shirley Street properties that but Gundry Drive that's been updated from a 25 foot setback to a 35 foot setback again in response to the public feedback we feedback we've been hearing and also input from boards and commissions and council. And then lastly, the I just want to highlight that this isn't so the zoning ordinance does include separate screening requirements for parking spaces and buildings that's included in Section 48 1184. And that includes both structural and vegetative screening requirements. So that's part of the site plan ordinance. So whenever site plan comes in with these kind of parking structures, there's already built in protections. And so staff is just pointing that out for part of the discussion. This is another kind of graphic that shows the setback areas as proposed, including the 35 feet from Gundry Drive and also the public park, Big Chimneys Park to the north and then to the south. You have this particular property is touching again a residential district to the south. And so that 20 foot setback would be in play there. Moving on to housing and affordability, the only change here from the previous iteration is the so that affordable housing contribution remains a proposed minimum 50% for any redevelopment to access the density incentives included in the overlay district. The only difference again is kind of to to kind of maximize and think about the way that affordable housing would be contributed relative to the kind of building forms that are likely to be built under the proposed setback in heights. The contribution form has been broken up based on whether that redevelopment takes the form of a multifamily or townhouse community to reflect the kind of density that those type of projects are likely to generate. But the the overall contribution remains or recommendation remains the same, either 50 percent of the total housing of the project or a one for one replacement of existing units. NO CHANGE TO OPEN SPACE AND CONNECTIVITY RECOMMENDATIONS, AT LEAST ON THAT SLIDE, BUT ON THIS SLIDE, WE HIGHLIGHTED, AND THIS HAS BEEN INCLUDED, INSERTED INTO THE DRAFT CODE, THAT TREE CANOPY MINIMUMS WILL BE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW BASICALLY WHAT'S DESCRIBED UNDER STATE CODE SECTION 15.2-961, WHICH SETS THE, YOU KNOW, the minimums that a locality can set for developments in terms of tree canopy, and that's based on density and use. So whether it's commercial or residential and units per acre, that's already set out in the state code. And so this is a practice we've done recently is instead of prescribing in kind of repeating the state code, we're just pointing to the state code. And the benefit of that is if that section changes, then we won't have to then update our local code because we're out of compliance. So by pointing to that state code, we're kind of ensuring that bridge remains intact. And then lastly, complimentary uses. Previous iterations of the proposal included allowing all B2 commercial uses. This was because the Gibson Street properties are B2. But it was good note from, and I want to give the Planning Commission credit for this, recommended removing BT uses across the overlay district because then you're talking about using BT uses in more residential areas in the RM area across the overlay district. And so the code has been clarified to include, in addition to residential uses, very specific residential supporting uses such as daycare, childcare, supportive residential services, and the like. So should I should I keep going to the map amendment? This is really quick. We're just showing that, you know, how the zoning map is going to change. This is what the zoning map looks like today. Virginia Village is outlined in yellow there and the MUR one or the mixed use residential excuse me, mixed use redevelopment one overlay currently covers the entirety of the Virginia Village area and the neighboring Pearson Square and tax analyst building is outlined in that thick black and so how the the kind of corresponding zoning map amendment with the proposed text amendments and this is a little hard to read would reflect the the right-hand map and so MU are one and would move to just covering the Pearson and tax analyst properties to the west. And Virginia Village would become, would have its own overlay district. And so we'd be breaking up the two. And so as this new overlay text amendment gets introduced, this would kind of be the operative action of then mapping that onto the zoning map. So I will stop there. I think that's all I have. And I'm happy to take any questions or comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Treanor. Questions or comments from Mr. Treanor on the zoning changes since work session we saw last week?

Ms. Lynn? Can I? I want to start with two clarification questions or kind of technical questions on the zoning map amendment in particular. This, I'm just trying to understand. This item is new, right? And I don't really take issue with removing the MER 1 overlay. But in terms of like the order of operations, it seems as though first reading on the zoning text code should potentially be before the ZONING MAP AMENDMENT, GIVEN THE RESOLUTION LANGUAGE REFERENCING APPROVAL ON FIRST READING. IN TERMS OF THE ORDER OF THINGS. AND THEN A SECOND JUST CLARIFYING POINT, WHERE THESE ARE B-2, it caused me, I was like, oh, that maybe it was B2 in the future land use map, and it's not actually the current land use map. And how is it that those four properties are B2 and they're not RM? And when you actually look at, or when I looked at the real estate assessment database, like quickly, one of the Gibson Street properties like shows up as RM and not B2 in the real estate assessment database. So I'm not actually sure that the map itself in terms of the current land use map is correct as to the four properties that are on that edge zoned showing up as b2 as opposed to rm and my and my you know real estate database thing up here that scout isn't actually letting me in for whatever reason on my tablet but it was something that what mr agan had submitted a comment saying do we need to rezone b2 to rm before we're putting an overlay district on something caused me to scratch my head as to B2 generally, given that this was like developed sort of together as a property. And it looks as though in the real estate assessment database, it says zoning RM for Gibson Street and not B2. So staff may want to look at that.

Was that for all of the properties?

It was at least for one of the 20 somethings on Gibson. So whether you're doing it now or at some point, like someone needs to look at that because I don't know something's wrong somewhere, either on the map or in the database.

All right. We'll find out which. Thank you.

And then, yeah, and then it was more of a question for the city attorney, given the resolution language on the map amendment itself.

Thank you. So ordinarily, you would establish the district through the MAP process first, and then once you have the district established, you would subsequently put the regulations, adopt regulations for that district. But I'm not, if you could point me to the language that is concerning, that would help.

It was just in the resolution, the attached resolution for the item. whatever the paragraph was. For the map amendment? Yeah, that city council had approved. It's on line 75, whereas city council further considered the proposed zoning map amendment at which meeting council voted to grant the proposed ordinance first reading and refer it to planning commission. And the item is actually coming up before any vote on first reading as to the zoning. Or maybe I'm reading it incorrectly as to the zoning map amendment versus the zoning code amendment.

I see. Yeah, the awkwardness is these ordinances are written for when they're going to be adopted, which is a long time and, you know, is months into the future. And so things that are happening tonight are written as though they happened in the past, which is awkward. But maybe I just misread it.

It may be that it is just it's all it's it's dealing only with the zoning map amendment and not the code.

It is dealing only with the zoning map.

And I think when I read seventy five to seventy eight, I had the code language in my mind, having reviewed the code language and thought that it was referencing the code language and then had a question about the operations as a result of it. That's what I'm saying. These are like technical questions separate and apart from my questions about the actual zoning code standards. Thank you. Does that clarify it? Yep. Thanks.

For what it's worth, I just went into the data scout and actually all four Gibson properties are showing up as RM. Maybe we don't need to rezone it.

I think that was my comment is we say the map is correct, the database is wrong.

I think that was really the basis of my comment about whether we should rezone them is that we've got two different zoning and this is just going to get confusing and just to clean it up so it's all clean and it just makes sense. I don't think it's that big a deal since we're the property owners especially.

Mr. Treanor, I just want to thank you for the clear, having the gray and the red to show everyone that there have been changes made, especially with, you know, screening and setbacks and things. I think that was really helpful. Thank you.

So I'm going to jump into the big things. I need to both catch up. Yeah. Let's start with the one of the affordability piece that you had in there. And line 603 in the staff report, we're talking about the open space. We're giving private developers the option of these different affordabilities or deliver open space. And my concern here, and I want to hear others, is that we're opening the door to development within this area that would eliminate affordable housing. And I'm wondering, this is something I think we need to take another look at between first and second reading to say, We don't want to be in a situation where a developer comes in, buys up several lots, and then puts a pocket park on each side, puts in several luxury townhouses, and we've just lost the affordable housing that's there. We want to make sure that that's retained. And it may be something where you can go with a bigger building or whatever. as long as you keep those one-to-one items. And I think it's something we have to work through. But I don't think this is going to hold up the RFP later because the affordability component of the zoning, we're bringing in a stricter affordability component as part of the RFP. So even if this changes, we're not going to get more strict than what's in the RFP. I think that's something that wouldn't change the impact of the on the RFP discussion later. But I do have a concern there that because one of the fundamental things is we don't want to reduce affordable housing. And I worry that this the way we're doing the open looking for that open space opens the door to that.

Can I jump in before Mr. Treanor responds to say that in reading this and reading the updated kind of post last week's work session proposed language that I had the same concerns as to lines 589 and 604 in the code language with respect to the buy right allowances for essentially the privately owned properties that are naturally occurring affordable housing? And I took the conversation to try to protect the affordability. But I think that in that minimum public open space area, given the sizes of the quadplexes relative to the lots right now, that you could actually, you know, on a lot, have 50% open space and essentially, you know, go up to four or five stories and have none of that building be affordable at all if you meet the 50 open space requirement where you could easily take two of those lots and put them together and meet the 50 open space requirement go up in height allowances and eliminate any affordable housing there at all so i don't actually think that one a and one b Do the work. That staff thinks it may do to get or to retain affordability to expand affordability and that you know our focus is on the. Publicly owned parcels, but. We are essentially. Dismantling or eliminating completely naturally afford affordable occurring naturally occurring affordable housing on the privately owned parcels. To the extent someone decides to invoke the overlay.

So before I ask staff to respond to that, I just think for the benefit of the public, because we've gotten really technical and really wonky quickly. And so I just think it'd be helpful to probably recap where we are. So there's an overlay district proposed for Virginia Village, and we're talking about how that applies to the non-city owned parcels and what those property owners can do. Right now, there is a test. Either you have to provide 50% of your building as affordable housing, or one to one if you're doing townhomes, or you provide 50% open space. That is how you access the overlay. Your underlining zoning remains the same, but if you meet either one of those tests, you can access the overlay and do a buy right proposal. The concern I'm hearing from Mr. Reagan and Ms. Flynn is that the 50% open space test is too easy, and you might end up getting market rate townhomes and then pocket parts on either side. And so I'd let staff to respond to that, but I just wanted to please try to bring the public up to speed because, again, we've gotten pretty technical, and I don't know if everyone understands kind of the detail of the question.

One quick question, comment on that, though, is the zoning actually applies to both the public and the privately owned. Yes, except the RFP on the public-owned one will guide that. Will be us, exactly. But a lot of the RFP is actually being driven by the zoning. we can't go weaker than the zoning.

Yes, for the 10 non-city owned properties, how this overlay might elicit or not elicit development that we may or may not want. So I guess I'd like staff to comment on that concern.

Sure. It's a valid concern. It's something, you know, we can continue to look at with the numbers. So in terms of, you know, open space and affordability, right, those were the kind of original recommendations in the small area plan. Well, lean more towards open space, right? And preserving open space and encouraging those kind of connections and linkages to Big Chimneys Park, again, was something we heard the community speak about a lot and we heard that valued. And so creating an open space requirement to kind of meet that spirit, again, considering that the zoning is largely going to work, right? obviously for the RFP, but everything after the RFP is kind of where a lot of this energy is being focused because the RFP is going to have its own kind of separate review process. And so it may be that the RFP generates you know, a ton of affordable housing such that, you know, the city might feel comfortable with creating opportunities for more open space. And so that's sort of the thinking, I think, of where that opportunity lies is where in the buy-ride process, you could have an open space option or the affordable housing option. But if, you know, if there's concern with the numbers, we can definitely continue to take a look at that.

I think the following question I have is I'd like to hear from either JLL or if we already had this conversation with them, like what is the market likely to do with a tenth of an acre or quarter of an acre parcel by itself? And then assuming they can assemble ones and we don't have that many contiguous ownerships, but assuming that people can all agree to sell at the same time, same price. and assemble multiple parcels, and then you get maybe three quarters of an acre. What is the market likely to do with this? And how, I guess, likely is a scenario where someone might build, because you're essentially spending a million dollars per parcel. So you're spending $3 million just in land costs. I guess I would, without playing real estate developer, I'm kind of curious for someone who actually is a real estate developer who we've hired, what is the likely outcome? Like, is someone really going to spend $3 million to build low-density affordable housing where you have to keep 50% of the land as open space? So that's kind of one question. I think the second question I would have is, if this council believes that open space is actually not that important, and we actually want to preserve affordable housing, and that's a bigger policy goal, could we modify 1A, or no, Two, modify the second test so that there is some preservation of affordable housing and open space, or make the test of it higher so that it reduces the possibility of an unwanted outcome. And does that need to be decided now? Because I think what we do in two depends, in my mind, what the real estate market's likely to do. I don't want to create zoning for a scenario that just doesn't pencil because of high land costs. And that's driving a lot of decisions here. So I don't know whether we've heard from JLL or have thoughts on that.

I don't know if JLL is with us or anything.

So two things, one, we can have a brief report from JL, our real estate consultant, on their thoughts on the value proposition between those two options. As Jack mentioned, this is basically staff's way of kind of reaffirming what we've heard, not just recently over the last few months, but also what was documented very clearly in our planning policies about the kind of balancing act this property could have between open space and affordable housing. One of the quicker tweaks to conduct between the first and second reading, because we're primarily discussing the future of the privately owned units, not ours, with these changes, is focusing on the second bullet regarding open space. We can consider tweaking the 50 percent number a little bit higher and making sure that that open space was contiguous, such that we weren't receiving two, three multiple smaller parcels, and again, allowing more incentives for the development scale. But I think it also comes down to a policy decision of do we still want open space on this property? Maybe that's changed. Maybe I think we're at a different place. I think it's another benefit of us waiting to do the second reading until we see what the reactions are from the development community. and how they view the potential for the site. I think the unit yield we might see with redevelopment and the affordable housing options might make us feel slightly more informed about how important is it for future phases to deliver affordable housing versus us having the flexibility to kind of be more open to open space and affordable housing. So that's kind of our strategy right now, but this is separate and apart from the RFP as we're simply looking at what future sites could do on the private side.

Thank you.

And I'm comfortable addressing this as we move forward before we do this. I think that's an important thing to understand. I heard a lot of the public comment is like we're deciding, we're locking it in. We're really not. We're at a midpoint milestone here. It's a major milestone, but We're not locking ourselves into anything right now. This is a first reading. If we need to make changes, this is a great example of one where I'm not sure we really have it quite right yet, but it's also something that could be addressed between first and second reading. We can work on it. We're talking about two or three months before second reading. We have time to figure that out, as well as the, and I know we haven't gone to the RFP yet, but I would like to say the RFP, we're putting it out there to get these concepts and get started, but we also have that solid option to say, we don't like any of these, we're not going to do it, and then we're not locked into some code that's not workable. So we're at a midpoint. a major milestone, but we're not at the end. We're not locked in. That's still months away. And I think that's very important for the public to understand. This is the middle.

Ms. Connelly has her hand up, so I'm going to call on her next.

Thank you. And this is just really quick. As we're living in the, we keep talking about, well, this could happen, this could happen, this could happen. And one of the things that occurred to me today as we were going through this is it could also happen that whatever we get as a response to the RFP includes a lot of open space. And then we might say, okay, we've taken care of that in this development. We don't need to worry about that in the second part. But that again, as Mr. Eggen just said really well, We're at a midpoint here, and that's another possibility of what could happen. We just don't know what's going to happen. So we want to be open to as many possibilities, knowing that we'll be able to work on the zoning once we see the response of the RFP.

This one. I was going to say the other piece of my sort of comment on 589 to 604. and sort of raising the issue maybe with unintended consequences for how this is currently framed kind of gets to the broader question about by right versus special use. And if we're thinking about sort of Virginia Village as a cohesive community, right, and not just what are the city-owned parcels, what are the privately-owned parcels, what do we accomplish on our lots, what are, you know, property owners able to do, or, you know, what rights do they continue to have AS UNDER THE CURRENT STRUCTURE VERSUS WHAT MIGHT BE UNLOCKED FOR THEM UNDER AN OVERLAY DISTRICT THAT, IN MY VIEW, A PROCESS THAT IS MORE OF A SPECIAL USE PROCESS THAT HAS SOME SORT OF CONDITIONAL APPROVAL OR AN ITERATIVE PROCESS WITH COUNCIL OR THE PLANNING COMMISSION, HOWEVER WE WOULD GO THROUGH THAT, HELPS TO RESPOND TO THE DEVELOPMENT THAT MAY OCCUR ACROSS THIS SITE RIT LARGE, AS WE TALK ABOUT THE OVERLAY DISTRICT AND THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE BUILDINGS TO ONE ANOTHER AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH YOU ARE ACTUALLY ABLE TO RETAIN SOME SENSE OF, YOU KNOW, COMMUNITY AND COHESIVENESS ACROSS THE ENTIRETY OF THE LOT. AND SO FOR ME, IT BEGS THE BROADER QUESTION OF SORT OF HAVING A BY-RIGHT OVERLAY DISTRICT VERSUS HAVING AN OVERLAY DISTRICT THAT HAS SOME SORT OF, YOU KNOW, SPECIAL USE TYPE process associated with it, even if it's not, you know, the process that we associate with, you know, a years long special exception process that we get for the larger, you know, entitlement zoning. So, you know, I raise that for my colleagues consideration as well, because I do think that a lot of the public comment that we heard goes to sort of a desire for continued public participation and opportunities for meaningful participation to help shape development in, you know, neighborhoods that people currently recognize as neighborhoods and not, you know, simply individual kind of development decisions across these parcels.

A question for staff. Could you apply a conditional process on some of the parcels in an overlay and some of the other ones not?

No, you have to treat similar properties the same way. And so while you couldn't do parcel by parcel, there are opportunities to create a special use permit or potential other discretionary considerations within the zoning text.

And could you refresh our memories on why staff is recommending kind of a by-right process over a special exception or an SUP or an SE light or any of those discretionary processes?

Sure. So, the, you know, staff recommendation is the buy right, right, because of the kind of detail that's in these. The kind of balance, I'd say, of detail and flexibility that's in these plans sort of, you know, reflect and are kind of heavier on those outcomes that more discretionary processes kind of get at in terms of setbacks, in terms of height, transition. affordable housing, open space. And so the recommendation is such because a lot of those things seem to be addressed in here while creating that flexibility and creativity for a by right project to address a lot of the goals and outcomes that the city has expressed values for the site. And so that, in addition to some of the extra meetings and expenses that would be required, you know, could disincentivize, you know, some of the smaller property owners from going through a process like that. If, you know, a single property owner, you know, wants to redevelop their property under the, you know, using some of the density incentives and the overlay, but are required to you know, do require more kind of meetings and submissions and materials that really might be more suitable for a larger development, things that the city's more used to seeing from an SE project that a larger firm has more resources to do. That could, you know, disincentivize them from contributing that affordable housing contribution that ultimately the city wants to see here.

Thank you.

Yeah, so if I'm understanding, so Ms. Flynn brought up the special use, that's a less cumbersome process than the special exception?

Not necessarily. Maybe a little bit. It still requires, so special use permits are approved by the Board of Zoning Appeals with a planning commission recommendation. And so the planning commission typically, you know, takes, so it's between those two bodies unless council specifically legislates themselves into that process which there's precedent for that but otherwise the bza approves special use permits again with the planning commission recommendation so you're looking at conservatively for more meetings and materials and prep and you know paying an architect to beat those meetings etc

Could we just have the city attorney respond to that as well as to the allowances that we as a legislative body and enacting code can actually put into place regarding a special use process and who has the decision making power under what criteria and what would actually be required for that, please?

Well, because you are crafting an ordinance in this case, you are not bound by your historical practices for special use permit or special exception. At least as far as the law is concerned, a special use permit and a special exception are the same thing. People might use the terminology differently, but legally they're the same. So the bare minimum process for a special exception is there's no requirement that it go to the planning commission for a recommendation. The bare minimum requirement is that it go to the city council for a decision and and while it might be prudent the city council is not even required to put into its ordinance criteria it can the reason it would be prudent and i would recommend it is because it provides some kind of systematic way to evaluate special exceptions But the criteria could be fairly simple and general, such as, you know, the singular thing the council will review is the impact of the project on surrounding properties within X feet. And you can constrain it to something that narrow, you can make it bigger, you really can make it anything you want at any rate. So the simplest, the most bare minimum special exception is a decision by the city council up or down. And there is some debate about whether a public hearing is even required, but if I know the city of Falls Church, they probably wouldn't do away with that. So it doesn't matter what the legal answer is probably. So that's the bare minimum.

Thank you. Is it possible to set a criteria based on the size of the proposal? So if somebody's coming in with a proposal for one property, they don't need to go through a special use plan, but if you're bringing together two or three plots, now you're getting big We want you to go through a special use proposal so that can be reviewed because some of the things with a larger height really with the setbacks and everything else, you can't really go too high with on a single plot. And that's another question. But can it be based on the footprint of the development of whether you have to go through special use or not?

I do think Mr. Treanor was referring to that possibility when he was answering the mayor's question earlier, which was the question was, can you have a requirement for a special exception on some but not others of the properties? And he correctly answered no. But you could do what you're suggesting and have kind of a lower scale proposal that is by right. And then when you exceed a certain threshold, whatever that threshold is as defined by the city council, then it would trigger some kind of additional review.

And I guess for the special use, you were talking about, you know, THE SPECIAL USE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT. INSTEAD OF HAVING BUY RATE ZONING, THE CODE COULD ESSENTIALLY SET THE OUTER PARAMETERS OF WHAT YOU COULD UNLOCK, AND THEN THE SPECIAL USE, RIGHT? LIKE, YOU HAVE YOUR PRE-EXISTING RM DISTRICT IN TERMS OF THE PERMISSIBLE ALLOWANCE, AND THEN WHAT THE CODE WOULD DO IS ALLOW YOU TO POTENTIALLY UNLOCK these expanded allowances, but it would be subject to a special use process that would take into account potentially both the impacts on the X surrounding area and possibly also the affordability goals of the reason that we enacted the overlay. And then it would be a question of what conditions would potentially apply to the permit so that you could get X range up to the maximum of what was actually in the code. And I guess I raise all of this because I think there were questions at the last work session about YOU KNOW, WELL, WHAT IS THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO OR WHAT IS DRIVING SORT OF PEOPLE'S ANXIETIES? AND TO ME, IT'S NOT SORT OF A, YOU KNOW, WHAT ARE THE BY-RIGHT DIMENSIONS? LIKE, YES, I THINK THERE'S A BUILDING ASPECT OF, AS WE HEARD FROM THE COMMUNITY, LIKE, IS THE MASSING WRONG, RIGHT? AND DOES THIS ALLOW combination of parcels or the consolidation of parcels to end up by right with a seven-story building across more of the property than what you're currently sort of envisioning. I think there's a second aspect of, you know, there are currently 40 naturally occurring affordable units there. And so there's a displacement aspect to sort of however these incentives do or don't work As to what that means for the other half of the residents who currently live in this community and a special use process gives those residents and the city through the council or the planning commission or the combination of the two. a little bit more sort of control to help protect those residents' interests in a way that a buy-right sort of process wouldn't necessarily do so where we don't own, you know, that half of the community. That is, it's, you know, a functional community at this point in time. And then I think there's a third aspect of the worst-case scenario, which is just, you know, the undercurrent I think as Mr. Egan has also acknowledged from his door knocking and that we heard from the public tonight in terms of the continued erosion, I think, of public trust in the development context in particular. when the public feels as though sort of council is abdicating its role in sort of proper oversight of development projects. So, you know, for me, that's sort of how I think of sort of a three part worst case scenario.

So I guess I have a simpler question. What would we get from a special use or special exception process that we're not defining now other than an opportunity to say no, that we don't like it. So having been through many SEs, a lot of the things I think we are debating, height, setbacks, density, massing, affordable housing, open space contributions, those are being defined in the zoning already. I think the only thing that we don't get to decide in a by-right process is architecture and voluntary concessions. I think that's it. But having lived through many SCs, we essentially are going through an SC discussion like now when we figure out the zoning. And so I guess I would again put out there, why would we set up an extra discretionary process if we already know what we're likely to get? And of course, we can still continue to debate what tweaks we might want to make between first and second rating. But I would just caution us to not layer on so many processes if we're essentially defining what we might get anyway. And the caution I would also ask is given that we can't apply this process just to the non-city-owned quads. I know our angst is all in the non-city-owned quads. And so by adding any sort of discretionary process now, we are going to get less responses potentially to the RFP because affordable housing developers' margins are going to be much thinner. They're smaller shops. Why would they, one, respond to an RFP for free? and then know that on the other side of the process, they got to go through a discretionary approval, even if it's a simplified four-meeting process and not a two-year SE process we normally make people go through. Why would they go through that? Why would we want to limit the options, especially if our goal is to maximize the creativity and see what options we get at this point? If we get responses back this summer and say, gosh, you know, we don't like what we see. We have an opportunity at second reading to actually add zoning code. I'm willing to even entertain another first reading at that point if we really think that there's something that we're not thinking of. But I think staff's done a commendable job of kind of defining what we think, plus having our real estate consultants on board talking about what are the what-if scenarios we should worry about. I think we should listen to their advice.

Oops.

I think the big one that we haven't talked about yet and we're going to need to talk about is height. Actually, the reason I'm looking at this is I've been looking at the RM code. Actually, the RM code is really good. I think it's actually really good. A lot of this overlay is not, for certain areas, it's really not that far off from RM. the by-right height is 35 feet or 45 feet based on what type of building, we're talking about 40 feet. So in some ways, the overlay isn't even changing that base height. The RM also then has a special use to go up to six stories and 75 feet. And that's kind of where I'm thinking that might be one of those things is what we have in RM. It may also be that we get, it may also be one of the solutions for the open space If to avoid a situation where somebody is doing something really bad, taking advantage of the open space criteria, maybe you can only get the open space through the special use or that's that extra step. That way, people have an opportunity to step in. We are going to need to talk about the max heights on these because that's definitely something we're going to talk about. But I think there are elements, and you mentioned architecture. We can't discount architecture. I mean, that's a huge one. We are going to have much better control of that once we have the urban urban design master plan through and it'll update a lot of what we have. But in the meantime, we're going to need some way to say, hey, you're not following. I think the architectures, the community, it's that community feel, it's the continuity with the area that somebody could come in and just put up a giant box. And we heard that today. People do not want the giant box. I think this gives us that ability to prevent that. I agree. We don't want to add extra reviews to the process for the affordable housing vendors through the RFP. But I think if we come up with a solution that aligns with the RFP process, it may just be one of these situations where they come in, they present, we have to vote on two different approvals. It really doesn't add a lot. It really doesn't add extra work for the vendor. They have to sit through five more minutes of a council meeting. because they're already going to have to come in and present to council and we'll have to make our, so I'm not sure if we design it right. I don't think, I think we can design it in a way that won't add to that, but then we retain that control.

Ms. Underhill.

Hi, thank you. IS THERE A WAY, I MEAN, TO ART'S POINT, IS THERE A WAY THAT WE COULD JUST ADD AN AFFORDABILITY REQUIREMENT ONTO NUMBER TWO UNDER SECTION 481029? OR COULD WE ALSO MAYBE JUST INCREASE THE OPEN SPACE REQUIREMENT? SO JUST SOMETHING THAT WOULD MAKE IT SUCH THAT WE'D GET AFFORDABLE HOUSING OR MAKE IT I mean, I guess the main thing would be, could we add an affordable housing component to number two such that the barrier is higher and it's what council wants to see out of the project for if a private developer did come along?

THAT WAS WHAT I SUGGESTED EARLIER, RAISE THE THRESHOLD OR ADD A AFFORDABLE HOUSING PRESERVATION COMPONENT TO THE OPEN SPACE TEST.

YEAH. IS THAT SOMETHING WE COULD DO? COULD WE JUST DO THAT AND WOULD THAT TAKE CARE OF OR ADDRESS AT LEAST THE CONCERNS SO THAT WE CAN KIND OF HAVE, I MEAN, THAT WOULD COVER THE ISSUES THAT WOULD MAKE IT MUCH LESS LIKELY OR MUCH HIGHER BAR FOR SOMEBODY TO BE ABLE TO REDEVELOP PROPERTIES AND THEY'D HAVE TO ACCUMULATE A LOT MORE. AND THEN THAT ALSO LEAVES IT AS A PROCESS THAT'S EASIER FOR AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPER TO MEET. WITHOUT HAVING TO COME BACK BEFORE COUNCIL MANY MORE TIMES. NEW SPEAKER PORTER?

NEW SPEAKER PORTER? NEW SPEAKER PORTER? NEW SPEAKER PORTER?

NEW SPEAKER PORTER?

NEW SPEAKER PORTER? I don't see why not. It would be, you know, obviously a policy type decision, but including an affordable, you know, maybe a smaller affordable component to an open space requirement.

Okay. So then Art, would that maybe help address some of the, or one of the issues that you brought up?

Well, I was just using it as an example around something that we might want in a special use process that, depending upon how that flushes out, and I think staff is already committed to taking a little bit more of a look at this between first and second reading. I don't think it has to be locked in today because the RFP has its own affordability piece. But yeah, I mean, adding an affordability component to number two is definitely one of the options. And depending upon how it ends up, maybe it doesn't need to be part of a special use. But I think the the architecture, especially more anything else, is something we do want to make sure that we have this community feel that we're avoiding the urbanization that we've seen and other pieces like that. And so it's having a special use. I think there's more than just that one that might be something we want to cover.

Yeah, I guess from my perspective, I would want to make sure that, you know, we're NOT DISSUADING PEOPLE FROM OR AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPERS WHERE THE MARGINS ARE ALREADY THIN FROM GOING THROUGH THIS PROCESS. AND SO ONE OPTION COULD BE SETTING A HIGHER BAR. AND SO THAT COULD BE THROUGH ADDING MORE A HIGHER OR ADDING SOME AFFORDABILITY COMPONENT TO THE OPEN SPACE REQUIREMENT. AND I SEE THAT AS SORT OF A WAY OF THREADING THE NEEDLE HERE TO MAKE IT A LITTLE BIT MORE EASIER FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPERS TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS RFP AND THEN ALSO GET WHAT WE WANT OUT OF THIS PROJECT WITHOUT HAVING TO MAKE IT A SUPER ONEROUS PROCESS.

NEW SPEAKER Yeah, I MEAN, FOR THIS PARTICULAR PART OF THE ZONING, I THINK THAT'S MORE FOR THE PRIVATE DEVELOPERS, NOT THE AFFORDABLE ONES. They're the ones who will be coming in. I understand not wanting to add more steps into the RFP process for our properties, and I think we can figure out a way that we don't really add more to that, that there's just another

One more vote by the Council and yeah, and I yeah, I have a similar view to Mr Egan on this that I don't think the special use is going to be the thing that deters the developer of the developer in terms of this. The RFP process already has to go through an iterative process with City Council to reach some sort of interim agreement as to what a development. would potentially look like if what we've been talking about in terms of like the back and forth with whoever the top ranked respondent is, you would think that that process itself is getting the respondent to sort of what similar to what the special use would ultimately be.

I would like staff's response to that, because that's different than what I remember the discussion with JLL being. That if we are adding a discretionary process after they go through and get selected, that extra step, even if we're having debates on what the final comprehensive agreement might be, if they don't get entitlements, that adds to the timeline and puts the March LIHTC application at risk. And I don't know whether the process actually would work. So I guess I like staff's take on that before we continue.

And I'm, you know, obviously not JLL, and I'm not a developer, but, yeah, typically the more uncertainty you add in the approvals process, the more, you know, folks are going to think about before they go down that road, right? And so when talking about especially smaller developers to, you know, I said this earlier, smaller developers are going to have fewer resources. uh to go through that potentially discretionary process and so when you think about the cost of uh you know architects and consultants by the hour the more meetings you meet the more kind of cost prohibitive um area you reach depending on you know that that individual's resources i guess my final point on this in terms of what is going to be the thing to deter the developer i don't think the special use is going to be the thing if we're talking about

having developers respond to an RFP that doesn't even have locked-in zoning at this point in terms of where their lost costs are in responding to something when they don't even know what the zoning code is. that they're responding to. So I think if we're worried about people not responding, it's because of a lack of clarity in what we're actually looking for in the RFP, then it is a special use process that accompanies a negotiated agreement with an interim use agreement.

So I'm going to get to Mr. Schneider, but I guess on that point, JLL actually did discuss that as well, because we did. I just basically asked how we feel about this parallel process. Would people feel uncertain? And they actually thought that the way we've designed it and laid it out in the RFP and the draft zoning changes actually was pretty clear to the development community. So that wouldn't be a concern to prevent responders from bidding. Mr. Schneider.

Thanks. So we spent a number of hours on this issue. At the work session, we've spent sometime today. I think we need to get some direction here to staff. Either they prepare a special use approach for a discussion in the future or they not. So I would move that we direct staff to prepare a special use alternative to buy right for the zoning ordinance. Second.

There's a motion and a second and the clerk is returning to her spot.

Mr. Agin.

Yes.

Miss Connolly. Yes. Miss Downs.

Yes.

Miss Flynn. Yes. Mr. Snyder.

Yes.

Miss Underhill.

No.

And Mayor Hardy. No. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for that, I think. We'll still have lots of debate going forward, I'm sure. A second item I'd like to bring to a vote are the other fundamental aspect of the zoning ordinance, which are the heights, three to four, five, three to four, what is it, five to six and six to seven? Correct. All right. I'd move that each one of them be reduced by one floor.

Is there a second?

Second.

Split on the second.

Can I ask a question? Sure. Mr. Senator, are you saying two to three, three to four, or are you giving a flat number, three, five? Six. What are you moving?

I'm moving that three to four be reduced to two to three, five to six be reduced to four to five, and six to seven be reduced to five to six.

Can I ask staff a question? Sure. Related to this. That is just, that would reduce the density, the expectation that we have of being able to put in some affordable housing. It's responsive to some neighborhood concerns. If we say, if we reduce it, do you think any developers will come in and say, well, I could do it, but I have to go higher? Or will they just not respond? And if we went higher, if we left it the way it is, do we think they would automatically all go to the top of the height? Because that's a lot of questions. Sorry.

I think it is likely that respondents will try to, you know, maximize the, you know, the value, but also work within, you know, the box that's given to them, right? So that's the short answer. Were there other? Do we think that this will prohibit responses at all? Was that the other question?

That was a question, yeah. I mean, you don't know, but...

It's hard to say. I tend to think not. I mean, that's part of this process is not locking in the zoning until we get responses that, you know, can provide some of that input.

Yeah. My concern with what Mr. Snyder has put up for a vote is it's across the board, and I think there's different pieces here. There's the three to four, there's the five to six, there's six to seven. I would rather see us discuss each of those separately because I think there's different concerns with the different pieces.

Ms. Underhill, you have your hand up.

Could we not just say that we have a strong preference for six stories on Maple, like as part of the RFP, and leaving it open-ended to up to seven, but that our selection will be, has a strong preference for, you know, let's say six stories on Maple, such that that would encourage PEOPLE WHO ARE APPLYING TO TARGET 6 AND HAVE A GOOD REASON TO GO TO 7 OR, YOU KNOW, GO TO SIX STORIES IN THE CENTER AREA ON SHIRLEY STREET?

NEW SPEAKER I THINK WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BOTH THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE. AND SO IF WE SAY 7, THAT'S THOSE ON MAPLE, THOSE FIVE MIDDLE ONES, WE DON'T HAVE THAT DISCUSSION. it would be a private developer going to seven.

And I think there's also a concern. I mean, when I was looking at this map versus the actual code language, I don't even understand on the middle where it says five to six stories. So what is 305 and 307, Shirley? So the bottom left two of the three that are in the middle, we say five to six. But I think under the code language, those two parcels could actually be seven by right as currently drafted. Because the bulk plane analysis doesn't apply after 150 feet, right? Like it's meaningless after 150 feet and those parcels are far enough away from the park that the bulk plane at that point, I don't think is constraining the height to five or six stories. So in terms of the graphic, as relates to the actual code language, IT SHOULD BASICALLY JUST SAY SEVEN IN TERMS OF WHAT IT IS THAT THE CODE IS POTENTIALLY PERMITTING AT FIRST READING FOR ESSENTIALLY EVERYTHING THAT IS LIGHT BLUE APART FROM THE CORNER PROPERTY THAT MAY AT SOME POINT BE LIMITED BY THE BULK PLAN ANALYSIS. THE SAME WAY THAT THAT, YOU KNOW, OTHER, WE'RE NOT ON THE MAP DRAWING ANYMORE, BUT THAT THE OTHER parcel closest to 208 i guess gibson it is it's closest to the park wouldn't be six or seven because of the bulk plane that's in the code language short answer is no because the way this is structured is that you have to meet all the requirements and this map

And the diagram label that it contains is referenced in the zoning text that I think precedes the graphic. So as you go through, it's basically all cumulative. You have to meet the bulk plane. You have to meet the setbacks. And the final is the vertical depression of the density, which is the height map. And only after you meet all of those factors, then you can be considered for approval.

Okay. So can you explain to me under the code language why 305 and 307 doesn't have a seven-story max? Like how it's actually constrained to five or six.

So this map reflects feedback we've heard from several stakeholders, planning commission, and council feedback, which was targeting a gradual transition from Winter Hill all the way to Maple. And one way of accomplishing that is not just looking at the current street configuration, but also the likelihood of the current law configurations and how that site could gradually over time redevelop. So part of it is kind of thinking of starting on the left west edge near Winter Hill and kind of having a three to four story height restriction which I think we heard loud and clear was something that people supported and then also starting on Maple where six to seven stories was also described several times to us. What that left was kind of a central portion of the block and how does that transition from the three to four stories to six to seven and that's how we arrived at that and some of that also plays into the four-story restriction that was applied, measured from Winter Hill, which specifically targets a minimization of shadows onto Big Chimneys Park. We wanted to make sure that surely that was not the point where additional stories began, but only after you got to the south or eastern side of Shirley.

Okay, so I understand all of that. I'm asking you to explain under the code language what constrains 305 and 307 Maple to five or six stories versus seven under the code language as is proposed for first reading.

So if you scroll up a little bit on the current slide, I believe it's the paragraph right there. So under E, that's where the reference for the entire site is then attached to the diagram below.

So it's based simply on the diagram and it's not actually tethered to the bulk plane or the heights as stated in the code. Like the five to six story is basically only encompassed in the diagram.

For the very reason that the bulk plane, if started at the edge of Winter Hill, to your point, no longer really applies by the time you get to the area between Shirley and Maple. So another control factor had to be entered into to make sure we were achieving the gradual increase in height.

Okay.

So I do think we have Mr. Snyder's motion. I think it's been seconded.

Is there more discussion on this? I think we're trying to understand the proposal. It sounds like if we go back to that map, it was to reduce everything by one. So two to three, four to five, and five to six. I guess given that you all introduced the idea of an SUP process, my question is, why would we further limit the flexibility in the options? Like if you get something on the top end of seven and four adjacent to one or you don't like it, you're adding an SUP process already. But I think having optionality allows you to make trade-offs, right? So if you can have seven stories on Maple, and that means you don't need to have four stories on the side facing Winter Hill, you can actually have that toggling with options now.

I think one of the challenges is that we're basically opening it up where if it comes in at seven in that middle, or even in the RFP, we would have to put that extra height into the SUP. And then it's very difficult to justify, OK, you said I could have seven, but now you're just going to say no. It seems like you're just going back on it, versus architecture is more of a subjective thing. And I think we need to deal with the proposals there. But afterwards, I'm going to make a motion to reduce the maximum. on line 498 to six stories and 68 feet because that, I think, is the key number that we have. I think it will leave us open to the discussions because this is first reading, and if we hear back from the respondents saying, You know, I could do so much more if you gave me three more feet. We can adjust. And I think it's another really good reason that we shouldn't be locking in the zoning now. We leave it so that we can make small adjustments like that. But at the same time, if we give them if we say, OK, it's seven stories, we're going to get seven stories. We're not going to know what the trade offs are. We're not going to know that there was a trade off that they just we just gave it to them. We didn't say, oh, what's the trade off to have that? They just took it. And we won't even know what the trade off is. We we have to say, hey, tell us. what we could get if we gave you another three feet. Now, the three to four, in my mind, is basically RM today is you look at RM and it's sometimes there's some types of buildings, it's 35, some types of buildings, it's 45. And what has been proposed is 40. So to me, yeah, it's three to four. You have that four story in there and RM says three, but it's four. if you keep it really tight, you do one thing, you put one nine foot ceiling in there and you blow through the 40 foot. So that three to four, I'm OK with that because it's essentially the RM zoning that's there now. But I think that that's seven. I think we we need to put that up there. So we're in keeping with tax analysts, with Pearson, with all of that. We shouldn't be allowing one very large building to try and pull everything up. It's an outlier. We need to keep consistent with the character of the neighborhood. And I think that means for first reading, this should all be six stories and 68 feet, 66 feet, somewhere in that range.

So, Mr. Reagan, are you amending the motion or you just commenting in general?

Well, that's I don't know which is the best way to do this.

It sounds like there's a motion and a second and we're discussing. So maybe it's cleaner if we take that up and then you can make a separate motion that we want to discuss further. I guess one other comment I'll have is that by limiting it, whether you limit to six, seven, just a six or three to four to two to three, even though I think Mr. Reagan makes a good point that our zoning by right today can already be up to three to four stories across the entire parcel. So reducing it two to three actually reduces people's actually property rights. So I don't know who would actually access the overlay then. But anyway, you risk that you'll never see those options, right? So if you restrict it from SEVEN STORIES TO SIX. THERE MIGHT BE A REALLY GREAT SEVEN STORIES OPTION THAT PROVIDES A LOT OF OPEN SPACE, PROVIDES NO DENSITY AND NO MASSING TOWARDS WINTER HILL THAT MIGHT MEET MANY COMMUNITY OBJECTIVES, AND WE MIGHT NEVER SEE THAT PROPOSAL BECAUSE YOU SAID YOU CAN'T GO UP TO SEVEN. AND SO AGAIN, I WOULD ENCOURAGE US TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO CREATE MAXIMUM FLEXIBILITY AT THIS STAGE IF WE REALLY WANT TO SEE CREATIVE OPTIONS FROM THE DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY. AND IF YOU ALL WANT TO HAVE AN SUP PROCESS, THAT PROVIDES YOU THE OPPORTUNITY TO SAY YES OR NO TO THINGS. And so I don't know why you would further hamstring any affordable housing projects we get and limit the number of housing units we're going to get. I think the other thing to think about is staff has told us several times now that there's a sweet spot for what gets LIHTC financing. So if we want to have a project that is buildable and financeable, they need to hit a certain number of units. And if you restrict how high and where the density goes, essentially, you're essentially forcing more density further back to Winter Hill and not up against Maple, which is what we heard from the community. So I just want to make sure we are smart about responding to community input in terms of actually how it may or may not actually hurt our public policy objectives.

I would ask Mr. Snyder if he would consider it a friendly amendment that we set a maximum of six stories. Like Mr. Egan's point of.

No, I'll stick with with my motion and then if that fails then we can do the the other one. I just I the community is asked repeatedly for. Particularly lower floors abutting Winter Hill and I think the community has a right to know where the City Council is on that, so that's why I'm posing it as a motion.

I guess my only concern, Dave, on it is the point on RM. And on those back, you're potentially at 2.3 as opposed to just being at 3.

Sounds like there's a motion and a second though. So unless the original motioner wants to take it off, I can call for a vote unless there's further comment.

I think you could be potentially, David, like a friendly amendment to say 3 on that back portion, 3, 4 in that middle portion, and 5, 6 on the outer portion.

I'm sorry, Council Member Flynn.

3 on the back piece, 3, 4 in the middle piece, and 5, 6 on the front piece. Yes. No, he was two three on the back piece.

So three on the back, three to four in the middle as opposed to five to six.

And five to six on the front, which is I think what you said.

Five to six on the front.

It's up to you.

Do you want to keep your motion, Mr. Snider?

Okay, I'll withdraw the motion and make this motion. Three, up to three stories abutting Winter Hill. Four to five stories in the middle and six on the Maple Avenue side.

Second was Flynn on the second Any further comment Can you call the roll then please Mr. Reagan I'm gonna go with no on that one Miss Connelly no Miss Downs no

Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snider?

Yes.

Ms. Underhill?

No.

Mayor Hardy? No. The motion fails.

I would like to make a motion that line 498 be changed to no building shall exceed six stories or 68 feet, whichever is lesser in height.

Second. MS. FLYNN ON THE SECOND. MS. UNDERHILL, YOU HAVE YOUR HAND RAISED.

MS. YEAH, I GUESS WHAT I'M WONDERING IS, AND MAYBE THIS IS A QUESTION FOR JACK, LIKE, HOW DO WE FIND OUT WHAT THE TRADE-OFFS ARE? IF WE CAP IT AT SIX, DOES THAT BASICALLY MEAN WE WON'T FIND OUT FROM A DEVELOPER THAT, LIKE, IF THERE'S A TRADE-OFF, LIKE, HEY, WE COULD GET MORE FAMILY-SIZED UNITS IF WE DO SEVEN STORIES, OR MAYBE IF WE HAVE A STEP BACK AT SEVEN STORIES, SO YOU CAN'T SEE IT FROM THE STREET. HOW DO WE FIND OUT WHAT THOSE TRADE-OFFS ARE, AND BY CAPTING IT AT SIX STORIES, DO WE BASICALLY ELIMINATE THE POTENTIAL OF FINDING OUT ABOUT THOSE TRADE-OFFS? OR IS THERE SOME WAY WE CAN WORK IT IN TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE TRADE-OFFS?

NEW SPEAKER. SORRY, WAS THAT AS PART OF THE RFP SUBMISSIONS?

Yeah, as part of the RFP. So if we cap it right now, it's six stories. Do we basically not have the opportunity to find out about what the trade-offs are for seven stories?

Yeah, I mean, I would assume you're, like, there may be some flexibility in terms of, you know, the submissions, but I think, you know, the first reading is going to kind of reflect where the council is on, you know, certain parameters. And so, I would think you, yeah, you wouldn't get as many or any submissions that go above the maximum height. THAT GET FIRST READING. BUT IT'S ALSO SOMETHING WE CAN CONSULT WITH JLL ABOUT IN THEIR EXPERIENCE WITH RFP SUBMISSIONS.

I GUESS WHAT I WOULD PREFER A SIX-STORY BUILDING, BUT IF IT TURNS OUT THAT ONE OF THE TRADE-OFFS IS WE GET NO FAMILY SIZED UNITS, THEN THAT'S SOMETHING THAT I WANT TO KNOW. OR IF IT TURNS OUT WE CAN GET GROUND FLOOR RETAIL, BUT IT NEEDS TO GO TO SEVEN STORIES, I THINK THAT CREATES A MORE WALKABLE, NICER ENVIRONMENT ON THE GROUND FLOOR. OR WE GET A CIVIC SPACE ON THE GROUND FLOOR, AND IT MEANS THAT WE GO TO SEVEN STORIES. OR MAYBE IT'S A STEP BACK BEFORE SEVEN STORIES, BUT WE GET MORE VARIATION ON THE FACADE. I GUESS WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SIGNAL IS THERE'S A STRONG PREFERENCE OF COUNCIL TO HAVE IT AT A MAXIMUM OF SIX STORIES, BUT IF THERE IS SOME OTHER THINGS THAT THIS BUILDING CAN PROVIDE FOR THE COMMUNITY THAT WE DEEPLY CARE ABOUT, THEN WE'D BE FLEXIBLE AND INTERESTED TO SEE OPTIONS THAT MAYBE GENTLY GO UP TO SEVEN. AND SO I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT THE BEST WAY TO DO THAT IS. IF CAPTING THAT AT SIX AND THEN SAYING LIKE, YOU KNOW, WE'RE OPEN TO OTHER THINGS BEYOND SIX OR KEEPING IT FLEXIBLE AT SEVEN AND THEN SAYING THAT WE HAVE A STRONG PREFERENCE FOR SIX. I just want to make sure that there's some way that we can have flexibility and hear about the tradeoffs and that we're not just blocking yourselves off from knowing what the other options are.

I'm going to see if I can thread the needle here. I think we can work with six and further encourage the development community to give us the consequences of doing so without going to seven. Some of that is already embedded in the RFP as we're asking them when they pick a preferred scenario between A, B, and C, tell us why you didn't pick the others. So there's a lot of sentiments there where we are curious of how they reach those conclusions, why they feel one is perhaps more financeable, more realistic, more appropriate for this location. So I think the sentiment here of had you had the chance to go to seven instead of six, what would you be able to address, accommodate? I think that language could be embedded in there. But on that topic, as we look at six stories and a certain foot distance, I would like to have the opportunity over the summer to come back for the second reading and kind of verify the 68 foot number because i think there's a lot more embedded into that and i don't want to make it sound like the lesser of the two means it's actually five stories uh given that some of these buildings may have a much taller first floor and we want to factor that in yeah i'm open on this in fact we could even take the 68 out at this point i'd be okay with that

If I could add just some additional information from the procurement statute, prior to ranking the respondents, the state law allows repetitive informal interviews with the different offerors and allows you to ask them to elaborate on their qualifications, their performance, their expertise. SO I THINK BEFORE YOU RANK, THERE IS A GOOD, STRONG OPPORTUNITY TO ASK THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS AND GET THAT INFORMATION.

OKAY. THAT'S IMPORTANT TO ME. I REALLY DO CARE TO KNOW WHAT IT IS WE'RE GIVING UP AND TRULY UNDERSTANDING THE TRADE-OFFS. I PERSONALLY STRONGLY PREFER, I THINK, YOU KNOW, Ground floor use, you know, whether it's civic use or whatever, a daycare, whatever else is is something that I or even like architectural details or whatever else I would be willing to trade for seven stories. And so I guess understanding. what else we could get from seven stories, or maybe not. I mean, maybe six stories is, you know, we can fit everything in, but really making sure that we get those details, even if we do cap it at six stories, that's something that I deeply care about.

Any other comments?

I'll come in and just say, I'm going to agree with Ms. Underhill here. I'd like your take on it. I understand the concern that possibly seven feet is too high. But I want to make sure we're not foregoing other things that we could have. So thanks, Ms. Underhill, for saying that so succinctly.

So what exactly would the zoning language say versus what the RFP language would say, which would invite possibilities or what you would do with seven if given seven?

uh well i guess that the rfp language would include the more kind of flexible you know language in there about you know the the zoning is what it is but the city you know has also been exploring and wants to hear about potential uh trade-offs or benefits of uh going to seven stories you know so i i think that that kind of language would be embedded in the rfp um and uh and then the the zoning height would be um you know, capped at either six or seven, and depending on, you know, depending on wherever council lands with the zoning, whether it's six or seven, you know, the RFP would then say, you know, this is the preference or we want to hear what the alternative is, right?

I guess clearly no one else has middle school boys who think that would be a really funny joke.

Your son is high school now.

OK, so there was a motion and a properly second one, I think. I heard Egan and Flynn on that. Any further discussion before we vote?

Can we just clarify the motion one more time, please?

Line 498, no building shall be changed to no building shall exceed six stories in height.

So it changes the zoning code, does not, and then we would add language when we get to the RFP that invites responses up to seven. Yeah.

And then the diagram would have to change, obviously.

Does that help, Ms. Connolly? Yes, thank you.

Call roll, please. Mr. Hagan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. The motion carries.

We've not gotten to RFP, but we'll put a pin in that one when we get to it after we get through all this. Are there other items for discussion while we're on the small area plan, the comp plan, or the zoning changes?

There was one thing that came up reading the changes from last Monday with the front setbacks reducing down to 15. on Shirley, which I completely agree. I think 15 is good. I'm on board with that. The concern I have is the ratio of 15-foot front setback to the initial height of the buildings. Currently, according to 499, so AB, you have a step back at 40 feet which obviously on the on the winter hillside is the maximum height the ratio of height to setback is very is basically the same as what we have on the townhouses on park and what we hear from the public is that those are very imposing and very a little bit too much. So I think we have some a good example of a 1540 there. 2540, I think, is a very different beast. But now that we've gone to 1540, I'm wondering whether we should reduce the point at which you have that 10 foot setback or step back, not setback, step back just so you don't have this a canyon, the potential for a canyoning effect on Shirley. I don't think we lose a whole lot of space having the step back be one floor lower.

So, yeah, right now, as proposed, it'd be 15 fronting Shirley Street and And the proposal would be to bump that up, increase the front setback. So increasing the front setback would, you know, further kind of crunch that development box?

No, not the front setback. Leave the front setback at 15, because I think we need that extra. It's the, instead of the step back starting at 40 feet, it would start at 30 feet.

So it's kind of...

And actually, that gives some architectural detail onto the front of those back ones, where you can't just go straight up and over. So that's what I'm wondering about, is how much of an impact do you think that would be if we lowered basically line 502 from 40 feet to 30 feet?

It it's so in I think it would have effects in different kind of. So when when thinking about like townhouses, right, townhouses on on park, you want to go it's after 40. So you kind of introduce that roof space because that's where the height maxes out. But if you're introducing a step back before approaching that maximum height, then it could create some design challenges kind of based on the type of building and form and lot you have. If you have just one lot, for instance, it might create for a funky. And I'm not an architect, so we may have to think kind of through that a little bit more, but the step back typically becomes enforced when you're starting to approach those kind of maximum heights.

Yeah, I think on Parkview, that's kind of the thing is we go up 40 and then there's a step back. Right. But it gets to be very, it gets to be a lot with a 15-foot setback. It's like, should we bring one down?

Is this one of those things that after we get some RFP responses in, we could decide whether it needs tweaking as opposed to trying to pull a number out?

Yeah. I would recommend that. All right. I'm fine with that.

OK. Other council questions or comments?

I still have a concern and, you know, I don't know about, Actually proposing an amendment, but I think it still goes to the importance of the special use, which I know the staff is going to take up. And one of the reasons I also feel strongly about it is just this notion of. Seven stories next to. Existing quadplexes. And so they yeah, there are places that you could conceivably have seven stories. next to a quadplex and the only constraint so to speak is a 10 foot step back at 40 feet and the addition of you know those five extra feet in the side yard um and so again It's a concern about the relationship between these buildings overall on this site that I don't think the code in and of itself without some sort of process that requires responsiveness beyond a site plan actually accounts for.

Sure. So part of the thinking there is the way I think you're comparing existing quadplexes, which have anywhere from 10 to 15 feet on any one of their side setbacks, is sites that might be redeveloping per the overlay district would be adding another 20 feet to that. So we're kind of looking at the cumulative setback between buildings, which at this point is anywhere from 35 to 40 feet, at which point the redeveloped portion will be going up to 40 feet before they have their step back. So mathematically, if that scenario were to actually play out, that would be the overall distance, very much what we were kind of beginning with Winter Hill, but at a slightly different height. I think the bigger question, though, is where such heights are permitted. So let's look at Maple Avenue. The shallowness of those parcels compared to what we have on the western side of Shirley is such that you would literally have to combine and consolidate much of the internal block structure of that site to really yield a seven-story multifamily building. It would be incredibly difficult to meet all the other setbacks. accommodate parking, likely structured parking and go up to seven stories with what's left on that block. And I think because of the likelihood of that and the other height restrictions that we have, that's what made us feel comfortable that that relationship was not really going to materialize. that a seven-story structure could be constructed or conceived right next to a quadplex, because if anybody came close to actually having the feasibility of a seven-story structure, we would likely be removing the remainder of those quadplexes, which means somebody must have acquired all of them, whatever's left.

Yeah, I mean, we're conceiving. I mean, the RFP conceives of that next to a quadplex, right? I'm sorry? I mean, the RFP conceives of that next to an existing quadplex. Right.

So we have those protections built in, and we've been increasing them throughout the process.

One other thing, I don't know if it's one other thing, I'm looking at my notes, but another thing on the code, I think this came up in the T-Zone conversation. Mayor Tarter had raised it with respect to parking and sort of where the parking goes and whether you end up with the potential for like buildings on stilts, like with the parking. right on south maple for example when architecturally we're trying to avoid right you're trying to enhance a pedestrian experience as opposed to diminish a pedestrian experience and i don't know if that's accounted for here somewhere or if it's accounted for in the parking code i just remember it coming up and you probably remember it coming up IN THE T ZONE CONVERSATION ABOUT THE BUILDING ACTUALLY LIKE WHERE IS THE PARKING GOING TO BE WITH RESPECT TO THE BUILDING AND IT ALSO CAME UP IN WINTER HILL RELATED COMMENTS TONIGHT IN TERMS OF WHERE PARKING STRUCTURES OVERALL AND THERE'S WE HAVE SOME CONTROL OF THAT IN AN RFP BUT AS TO THE CODE ITSELF IT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR

Yeah, and I think kind of similar to Mr. Egan's comment earlier, staff kind of landed with that sort of design consideration and like seeing how RFP responses come back with that particular design. You know, question that the code section I pointed to earlier accounts for, you know, screening and buffering requirements. So in addition to, you know, the increased setback from sensitive areas and in height restrictions, you know, you know, staff was recommending that kind of all those ingredients would could be a good starting point to see what kind of creative responses we get back where the parking is being cited. And, you know, in terms of financing to what how does that play into the overall units, unit yield returned and informed. So I think The recommendation in terms of parking structures and siting parking is kind of seeing what comes back in the RFP and returning to that down the road, if need be.

Actually, staying on parking, one of the things I know we're referencing back to the parking requirements. I like that. When we get to second reading, I mentioned this is we should have the data of how many cars are registered in with these properties. And so we should be able to know for a one bedroom property. What is the current cars per one bedroom? And we may want to incorporate that in when we get to second reading or because I have a feeling that number is less than what our current parking requirements are. Let's go data driven there.

How many how many cars are registered per per address or per unit per occupied unit?

Yeah, I think Mr. Reagan is just saying that between now and second reading, we should just collect data on actual parking counts there and then that can help inform whatever the requirements are. I mean, if it were up to me, we would have no parking requirements and we'd encourage them to share parking with adjacent buildings, as I said. So we shouldn't have to worry about parking on stilts because they don't need to build parking.

Oh, I think open up a pedestrian passageway into tax analyst and there's your source to meet the parking requirements. But that's going to take a whole discussion. That's a bigger thing.

We're nearly at four hours in, so I also just wanted to pause to see whether people needed a break before we continue the discussion on zoning, comp plan, smaller plan. We haven't even taken up motions other than the amendments that were made. How are people feeling? It sounds like people would like a bathroom break perhaps.

I would suggest we keep going with this part of it, the zoning comprehensive plan.

Can you hold it or just go?

Whatever people want to do is okay.

Okay. Well, people are welcome to get up and use the facilities if they needed to.

Okay.

Because we still have other items on the agenda and then the RFP at the end of the night as well.

I think I'm on my last question for this on 499 to 503 and you may have covered this last week. I'm not entirely clear. Uhm? The 10 foot step back basically only applies so so for a person walking down South Maple. At six stories, for example. The there's no step back requirement at all. On the. the build the back of the building at like the bowling alley for example so like there are pieces right that will be straight up like the full height in ways that we normally have step backs over four stories

So so the step back, yeah, would would apply only in specific scenarios, which is when a budding internal residential district or public park.

Would it apply on Maple?

No, because that that frontage wouldn't translate right. The problem that that frontage isn't in a budding residential district or public park.

yeah i mean i yeah i think if we're talking about enhance you know pedestrian experiences and whatnot to walk down maple and have a seven-story building 18 feet back from the curb with no step back is a problem i mean a six-story even because we're at six now in our but so

I think what makes buildings kind of walkable, and Justine's more of the expert here, is when you look at Pearson Square, I don't think there's actually step backs at Pearson Square, but it's like building articulation and activated storefronts and an interesting streetscape. So step backs, while are helpful for reducing massing in bulk against a residential district, as we've debated, in my opinion, is not the only thing that makes it a pleasant, walkable experience.

Part of the streetscape standards kind of address that too, right? When you have the allowable front setback, it allows you to address certain things like street furniture, trash. depending on what the ground floor commercial is, if there is that space for gathering or entryway egress, things of that nature. So definitely, yeah, building orientation can play a part in transparency and windows and things of that nature. But also the streetscape plays a big part of that, too.

Could I suggest that staff takes a look at this because along Maple is almost all private parcels and I don't know if we really have to get this locked in tonight.

I think, Mr. Egan, is part of your concern that the, you know, because you're going to have Quinn on the one side, and if that whole line is eventually developed, then you have that canyon effect. Is that sort of what you're getting at?

That's a concern. I think that is a concern. But to your point that the architecture of it, on the other hand, we don't have there's a lot of factors here that I don't think we're going to resolve right now and I think can be addressed prior to second reading.

Staff, we just make a note of it. Again, depending on RFP responses, we might get whether we need to introduce a step back that feels appropriate for second reading, not something that we need to perfect now.

Mr. Snyder. Thanks. One last question from me. We've been asked to consider the inclusion of the phrase and the practice of blended preservation. Is that best here or is that best in the RFP? Because I think A and B basically sort of call for that. So what's the staff thought of that? The best place to embed that concept?

Yeah, I think the RFP would probably be best for those more, for more kind of descriptive and architectural sort of thinking. Zoning ordinance doesn't typically address architecture.

Yeah. Okay. Best in the RFP. Okay. I'll maybe ask for that because I think it's consistent certainly with AB and maybe even C. So, okay.

Thank you.

Just one last comment that I don't think that which is you change the back setback to 35 feet. And I really appreciate that staff listened to the feedback and took it to heart and figured out a way to to make this work with shifting the buildings forward. And I think you deserve credit for for doing that. That's just a comment.

I second that.

Okay. So given that we had read all four of these, and we have four different votes that we need to take, And then also several motions that were made in between. The staff have recommendations on, I guess the easy ones would be the small area plan and comp plan first. TR 26-23 and TR 26-24. Those did not have amendments to it. So if we could pull up the first one. I will entertain a motion.

I move to refer TR26-23 to the Planning Commission, schedule a public hearing for July 27th, 2026, and advertise the same according to law.

Second. Downs on the second. Egan with the motion. Can you call roll, please? Mr. Egan?

Yes. Ms. Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill?

Yes.

And Mayor Hardy? Yes. The motion passes. Thank you.

Call the next, please.

Move to grant first reading to TR26-24. Is there a second?

Second.

Snyder on the second. Egan with the motion.

I think we need a little more detail on that motion.

Oh, I'm looking at a different. Okay. Let's draw that motion and try again. I'll withdraw it because interesting. I'm looking at a different document. Move to grant first reading to TR 26-24, refer to the Planning Commission, set a public hearing and second reading for July 27, 2026 and advertise the same according to law.

Second. Ms. Snyder on the second again.

Call roll, please. Mr. Egan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder?

Yes.

Ms. Underhill?

Yes.

Mayor Hardy? Yes. The motion passes. Thank you.

So now if we, TO 26-18, this is where it gets, this is changing the zoning maps and removing the MUR overlay. This one's the easier one before we get to 26-15. Is there a motion for this one?

I move to grant first reading. Is this TO 26-18? Correct. Refer to the Planning Commission set of public hearing for October 26, 2026 and advertise the same according to law.

Is there a second?

Second. Second. I think I heard. Madam Mayor, do we need to have a public hearing on this special because it's an ordinance? Yeah. Open it for public.

Not tonight, I don't think. Are you talking about on this word, not at first reading?

Not at first reading.

Okay.

I know that we wanted to have more public comment, but if you would like to hold your public comment for the RFP section, I'm sure. Or if you want to comment. Sorry, I couldn't hear you.

Now? Okay.

Would you like to comment now? You're welcome to come up, Mr. Baruch.

Sorry the late hour. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Nader Baruch and I want Virginia Village to succeed. This is public land and it's a real opportunity for Falls Church to create affordable housing, improve the site, and meaningful green space that shows the redevelopment can work both for new and existing neighbors. That is why I'm asking the council not to rush this and not proceed in the order that it's planning on doing so. The rules should come before any deal and before any RFP. If the city issues the RFP based on zoning standards that are still being debated, such as they're being debated tonight, with more debate to come, there's a real risk of narrowing the public process before the public has had a meaningful chance to shape the outcome. It'll be up to the developers to provide comments rather than the public. Once the RFP process is complete, and a preferred project begins taking shape, how much real room is there for the zoning to change based on public comments? I think very little. That is a transparency concern that you've heard repeatedly. The public input should come before the outcome is effectively narrowed except for the developers and who are bidding on the project. This will result ultimately in a binary choice TO EITHER REJECT THE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL, THIS IS NOT A WIN-WIN THAT SEVERAL COUNCIL MEMBERS HAVE BEEN HOPING TO GET TO. IT'S A WIN-WIN FOR THE DEVELOPERS, BUT NOT FOR THE CITIZENS WHO HAVE TRIED TO REMAIN ENGAGED AND SHAPE THE PROCESS AS THIS IS MOVED FORWARD. I BELIEVE THAT THERE IS A BETTER PATH, ONE THAT SUPPORTS AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND GIVES CLEAR DIRECTION TO DEVELOPERS ABOUT HOW THEY SHOULD DEVELOP THE SITE THAT FITS WITH THE SURROUNDINGS having the existing zoning that's being proposed finalized before the RFP goes forward. As to the zoning, I'll pivot to that. For the Winterhill Edge, I appreciate some of the changes that have been made by staff and with the support of members of this council. That's a great beginning. I appreciate the addition of the 35 foot setbacks, but I think we still need to work on the edges because of the bulk plane won't necessarily limit the type of step up that can happen or the buildings beginning 40 feet from the property line and being a four story wall or four story wall. Relying on the bulk plane is not sufficient alone. Virginia Village, Winter Hill Apartments, condos, and townhomes all work together as a cohesive whole to build community, in large part because of the buildings fitting together, as Mr. Agin and others have said. And we don't want a situation where buildings start overwhelming each other and break the neighborhood feel. To create a real win for the current and future residents, the scale and massing need to fit each other. and is drafted scenario C and the zoning simply don't do that.

If you could wrap up, that would be great.

Yeah. I would encourage you to think through what you're doing and take a breath. And as far as moving some of the density around, I appreciate reducing some of the heights, but I hope that that doesn't ultimately result in the massing as the mayor mentioned coming towards Winter Hill and disrupting the edge that we're trying to create and preserve. Thank you.

While we're in public comment, any other people want to comment before we take up the motion?

Okay.

Even though we're not required to have a public hearing, I'm going to close the public hearing. So we have before us TO 26-18. I don't think there was a motion because there was also amendments that were made or TO 26.

I think we did have a motion on this one.

Did we have a motion on this one? I think so. This is the map one. This is 18, right? Yeah. 2618 is the map removing the MUR overlay? Okay.

I move to grant first reading to TO 26-18, refer to the Planning Commission, set a public hearing for October 26, 2026, and advertise the same according to law.

Is there a second? Second. Downs on the second. Call roll, please.

Mr. Egan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. The motion passes.

Okay, now we're on TO 26-15. This is the complicated one.

I'd maybe make a suggestion for this one. After where it says TO 26-15, I would check with the city attorney on this, but maybe just say as amended to TO 26-15 as amended since we have the motions.

Is that sufficient, Ms. Gillette? Can I make a motion before we do this motion? And my motion, given the amendments tonight and the request and direction to staff of a special use permit, I would actually prefer to postpone first reading on 26-15 to July 13th so we have an opportunity to see what that would look like before actually doing first reading on the code as reflected in the in tonight's package with respect to the special use in particular.

So there's a motion to postpone TO 26-15. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Snyder on the second.

One comment I would make is that if we postpone first reading of the zoning, I think we would also need to postpone the RFP issuance because as I've said for the whole time, the zoning has to come, first reading has to come before the RFP.

And by pushing out a month, since we already pushed it out a month, what does that do to the overall schedule?

Elliot Kaye. It compresses it later. Marietta Robinson.

And you actually might want more time to negotiate the comprehensive agreement, I assert.

Marietta Robinson. So Ms. Flynn, just so I understand. You just want to see more sort of in, I know we had discussion about including the special use permit and some other things, but you feel like you wanted to see it more in writing or?

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to support first reading without a special use permit. And so if staff, and I think, you know, we can give direction to staff, but from various meetings, I think there at some points in time have been the semblance of a planning commission majority and the semblance of a council majority asking for special use and we haven't seen the Writing to date, so I would like to see the writing before it actually goes out for first reading, especially if we've heard from the city attorney that we're going to need a new first reading regardless. If we actually include a special use, so my preference would be do. Postpone and we can take a, you know. Vote on that before voting on. First reading otherwise.

Miss Connolly, you have your hand raised first.

I do, yes, and this goes to what we spoke about last week, and that is if we do a first reading on this and then staff reviews, special use, we decide we want to incorporate that, we would then need to do a second first reading. There's plenty of time to do that and still have a second reading on whatever the first reading is by October 26th. So that's why I'm comfortable voting on this as the first reading. I'm asking and saying at the same time, this is what we talked about last week, correct? That if we want it, we can vote on this. If we want to change this, we can do that, have another first reading, and then have a second reading October 26th.

My understanding is not ideal, but we could do a new first reading. You have time for that in the process because second reading is not scheduled until October. What we have less time for and would be ashamed to compress ourselves is the RFP process. So by delaying that also a month, you eat into the time that you ideally would have in the fall.

Exactly. Thank you. That was my question and my comment is that I'm comfortable voting on this knowing that we have asked for how we could incorporate an SUP and possibly do another first reading.

So I would like, what I don't want to see happen is the information of the SUP dragging out. So I'm kind of comfortable. voting on this for a first reading. However, I wouldn't want to wait till September to see that SUP. I still want to see it in that July time frame. Let's get it done early and figure out how that is. There was a couple of things that I think we need to jump on so we know if we're going to need to do it. I had a different issue that, as I was reading the previous one, I realized is we still have, and I raised this before, that I'm still feeling like the second reading should be at least on the same day as the acceptance of the RFP. So, and I don't think we were looking at end of October for the RFP. RFP, so accepting the developer for the RFP. So I definitely do not think the second reading on the zoning should be after that milestone. So I noticed when I was reading the other one that it's still saying October.

COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- So I think I heard Ms. Connolly and Mr. Egan both say they're comfortable with first reading on zoning tonight.

Is that Ms. Connolly, did you have another comment?

Your hand is still raised. No, I'm sorry. Was that correct? Did I understand your comment and Mr. Reagan's comments? You were both comfortable with first reading on zoning tonight.

But I do agree with Mr. Reagan and I understand Ms. Flynn's point. I think it needs to be done sooner rather than later. We need to We can't kick the can too far down the road.

Concern, too, is like, you know, we saw the timeline and the first reading. I don't know, when is this going to Planning Commission for the first time? Because I guess I would like it going to Planning Commission with the understanding that council direction is that, We want to see what a special use process would look like for the overlay district. And so I don't want to have all these conversations and this just fall away.

Well, that's why I think the motion was amended to say grant first reading with the amendments, the two amendments motions made tonight. So it incorporates those two points.

So I'll say, you know, I think probably the RFP process needs clarity on what the entitlement process is at the end of this. Staff recommends a by-right process. I think you're going to get better proposals, and having that SE tacked on to the end of this, I think, is going to be a difficulty for respondents. Even worse would be putting an RFP out where the entitlement process is not clear. We would be having a question and answer process with potential respondents and they would say, well, what's the entitlement process? And we say, we don't know. Might be by right, it might be a special exception. That's not good. So, you know, that is where we are. I think probably the best thing to do is for us to get back with you as quickly as possible on what that SE process would look like and there'd be a decision to be made on it. It would not be good to have that lingering.

So do you, sorry, Mr. Snyder, are you going to say something?

Yeah. So let me try this. Motion to grant first reading to TO 26-15 is amended to refer to the Planning Commission so the public hearing for October 26, 2026 and advertise the same according to law and direct staff to prepare a special exception slash special use process. I'm going to How many weeks do you need for that? Robert Adler.

Could we do July 13th? Robert Adler.

We can do our best. Another option is, you know, later in July since we're already coming back for the second reading of the small area plans. Is that a timeline that we could work with? Again, we can try to be aggressive, but we do have some days where we're...

Given the sentiment was that this should be the lightest SUP process possible, allowable by code hopefully is very light and very easy. I don't think anyone up here would want to see a process more than one meeting or the minimum requirement, because I think it would slide in the face of what we say we want.

And a process that's integrated that would not add additional meetings to the RFP process, so that it could be integrated into the same meetings that the RFP process... By law, the SUP process has extra meetings already, so you already added extra meetings in.

Well, the RFP has extra meetings, too. I think the difference here is what we're describing is the RFP process already has a schedule and certain meetings we are committing to. What the difference in the review process would be is once we fast forward to late this year, early next year, and an actual development application is filed, a site plan, it's what happens then. So at that point, the RFP would be well behind us, and therefore any additional meetings significantly increase the review process and therefore have the impacts that I think Wyatt was mentioning earlier.

Oh, so they can't really... Yeah, so we are, by directing staff to add an SUP process, you are adding extra meetings and hurdles for people to jump through. And knowing that that's what on the other side of what they might be bidding on, are you reducing the possibilities that we might get, which I think was why staff has continued to encourage us to use a buy-write process.

I GUESS MY CONCERN IS, YOU KNOW, WE'RE HERE FOR A REASON, PLANNING COMMISSION IS HERE FOR A REASON, AND I, YOU KNOW, I in an SU process would at least like the benefit of a planning commission sort of look at things including like the aesthetics of things and the relationship between things and having some responsiveness that has to be responsive as opposed to.

I think our desire to have this is less about the properties we own and that development and more about the privately owned properties and anything that might come along a year or two years from now.

And this may be a good opportunity to signal what staff's relationship with the Planning Commission has been, particularly since last summer, and we had to institute changes from the Commonwealth. I think we've done a good job of bringing and setting the stage for thoughtful conversations with the Planning Commission. I think in my role as the designated agent and working with a number of staff, I think we've been pretty successful in addressing a lot of the comments the Planning Commission has had. So I think this is true for a lot of by right applications, whether it's town homes, smaller commercial sites. I think we're trying to maintain that relationship despite, I think, some of the new rules we are obligated to follow. So I don't want to leave the perception that just because something is by a right means that that external review does not occur, and we do have additional opportunities for feedback.

I know, but I'll have the same conversation with you that I think Mr. Krasner often has with you about site plan and ministerial, and do you check the boxes, and you can have whatever kind of conversations. But at the end of the day, you can't not approve something. you know, like, there's no teeth to the actual site plan if you meet the code versus, like, how much influence, you know, can they actually have at the margins. And I guess I would say, you know, we have benefited from, um, that process and we've benefited from public input and our projects are better for it and the city is you know better for it and so i'm i i hear you on it but i'm not gonna shortchange that

So question I have for staff. So I'm hearing Mr. Egan's concern is mostly about what happens again on the non-city owned parcels, that we don't actually want to introduce a SUP or SU process for the city owned parcels that are going to go through the RFP. So is there, even though we already had an amendment to direct you to add this process, is there a way to only add it after we are done with the RFP process to the overlay? And after we're done with the entitlement for the... You could. Right. So that protects against, like, that allows the RFP to proceed more freely on a by-right path. And come December, January, for the overlay that still applies to everything else, you can add an SUP process or SE light or whatever we want to call it.

Once a site plan is approved.

Once the site plan is approved, yes.

Or maybe there's an exception for designs that have gone through a certain type of review that, so if you're coming in with, if it's an external vendor coming in and saying, here's what I want to build, you haven't had council review or something like that, whatever has come through the RFP process is going to go through a couple of reviews by counsel. Maybe there's some, you could build something into it to say an exception for, that you don't have, that you can assume approval if you've gone through approval by the counsel prior to that. Something, some little. But we're playing games here, and I think we start getting legally iffy.

The city attorneys say, okay, but... My suggestion is that what we're doing is directing staff to begin to work on this. That's what we're doing. So let's just give them a date when they need to give us something to look at. July 13?

Yeah, I think...

And then we can take it from there and we can discuss it. But you can give us the out, staff could give us the outlines of what that would look like. Yeah.

And what might be subject to it and if there's some way to deal with that. I think it makes sense.

So I'll restate my motion to move to grant first reading to TO 26-15. As amended, refer to the Planning Commission, set a public hearing for October 26, 2026, and advertise the same according to law and direct staff to provide a first draft of special exception or special use language by July 13, 2026.

Is that a substitute motion?

Well, it's basically the motion that I made before, but we then had a debate over the last thing, the date.

The motion that was under consideration was the one from Erin for postponing. Was that withdrawn?

There was still a motion to postpone by Ms. Flynn and then seconded by you, Mr. Snyder, I believe, to postpone the whole vote altogether. So unless you'd like to withdraw the motion, I guess we can take that up first.

It's up to the maker of the motion. I'm willing to withdraw, but it's up to her.

I would move to postpone until July 13th.

Okay, so Ms. Flynn keeps her motion. Mr. Schneider, do you still want to second her motion?

I'm confused here. So you're postponing, but isn't what Mr. Snyder's, the latest motion the same thing?

The latest motion from Mr. Snyder went ahead with first reading, but we had asked staff to come back in July with an update on what an SUP process looks like. And Ms. Flynn is saying no first reading at all, delay the whole thing altogether, which would inevitably delay your RFP as well.

Okay. I understand. Thank you.

Did I get that right? So I think there's a motion and a proper second, so I'm going to get the show on the road. You can call. Roll, please. Mr. Egan?

No.

Miss Connolly?

No.

Miss Downs?

No.

Miss Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? No. Miss Underhill?

No.

Mayor Hardy?

No.

The motion fails.

So, Mr. Schneider, back to your original motion.

Right. Move to grant first reading. The TO 26-15 is amended. Refer to the Planning Commission to the public hearing for October 26, 2026, and advertise the same according to law and direct city staff to provide a first draft of special exception or special use language by July 13, 2026. Is there a second?

Second.

Is Egan on the second?

Call roll, please. Mr. Reagan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? No. Mr. Snyder?

Yes.

Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. The motion passes. Thank you.

Okay, so now we're at 1145. If people would like to take a proper break, sorry.

I do have a question before we get to work on the special exception process for this. The criteria that I heard you'd like incorporated into the ordinance is a review of design and architecture. Secondly, a review for impact on properties within a certain distance. And then I also heard a concern for time. And would you like to put a time limit on yourselves for when action will be taken? once the application has been submitted. So that maybe you only have one meeting or two meetings, but like 30 days, 45 days. I mean, it's kind of a tight time as possible.

And again, this is both for RFP respondents to get their entitlement as well as any future projects on the non-city-owned quads. So this applies equally.

That's right. It would if the SUP process or the special exception process is incorporated into this ordinance, then that's true, what you said.

Well, I think to me, having a tighter timeline would be something that the developers would want to say, oh, okay, this is a tight process. So I would say yes on that.

I guess given the earlier discussion about how to not apply this to the RFP process and burden it. I guess as part of your recommendation, I'd like to see whether you can add this SUP process or SU process only after the RFP. Hopefully we have a project that actually gets entitlement. So I'd like staff to give that some thought.

I, my initial answer is that's possible. There would be a gap between the time when, a short gap, but a gap between the time when we've entitled the RFP properties and when we could get an ordinance adopted that has the special exception requirements in it.

So you don't need to answer now, but I guess I would like that to be considered as if that's a possibility. Because I'm hearing most of the anxiety is about the what-if scenarios on the non-city-owned quads and the concern to not burden the RFP process. Because we all say we want affordable housing and we want to maximize the options we're going to see. And so why would we want to weight that down now if we are very clearly defining the guardrails in both the zoning and the RFP language? So I guess I would ask that when staff looks at this in the next few weeks, whether there's a way to design it or implement the SUP process only after we do entitlement for the hopefully future project we might see.

I do think and maybe I know I'm thinking out loud, but I think there's an opportunity for some concurrent processing with the RFP properties whereby the proposal that's submitted and discussed through the RFP process could run to some degree concurrently with a special exception process so that when you're concluding the RFP process, you're simultaneously concluding the special exception process?

MR. Yeah, I think staff just need to take, for the 13th, that's one of the things they need to look at and figure out. We're not going to figure it out right now.

CHAIR BUERKLE. And I think for criteria, I had also mentioned Like, what is the project proposal actually doing with respect to the affordability goals?

And I think we were talking about that green space and how we, yeah, that affordability paragraph, it may tie together.

Is that helpful guidance?

That's all I need. Thank you. Okay.

So before we get to the other items on the agenda, because we still have TO 26-13 consent, and then we will get to the RFP. Are people ready for a break? It's 11.49. Take a break until midnight. 11 minutes, please. Thank you all.

CLARKE, ARE YOU READY?

ARE THE CAMERAS BACK UP? Are we good now? Okay. I think we are back now. Welcome back to 12.01 a.m. the next day. So next items on the agenda is TO 26-16, which we saw in work session last week. This is to allocate the car tax relief funds from Richmond a little differently to give more relief to lower value cars. Thank you for staying the late hour. Mr. Clinton, thank you for joining us.

Staff giving this one for the record. Sorry. Do you want me to read this for the first reading? Yes, while he's making his way up, please. TO 26-16 is an ordinance allocating personal property tax relief funds for tax year 2026. Welcome.

Appreciate it. There's been no changes. There's nothing different here than we discussed in the work session. Basically, we're with interpretation by the city attorney, the council's involved in approving the PPTRA relief rate. Very similar, all the inputs that we've had in the past. It's just a little bit different formula, kind of a housekeeping. And like a lot of the PPTRA, it was never indexed for inflation. So, we're trying to address. things that have changed over time, and that's raising the minimum taxation level with a very modest impact. And the goal all along is for the relief to be revenue neutral, and that's what this proposal. And it's a collaborative approach, of course, with the CFO and particularly Melissa Ryman, the deputy CFO, and the treasurer. Obviously, she needs the number to put on the bill. That's where we're at. If there's any questions, happy to answer them.

Any questions or comments on this since work session last week? It's really we're just changing. If we can scroll down to that threshold chart, we're changing the, from 1,500 to 3,000 is the beginning. First, $3,000 of value is when you would not be as charged car tax. And then if you're $3,000 above, the rates apply.

It would still be the license fee.

Questions or comments from counsel? We don't need a public hearing tonight, but if there's any members of public who are still with us at midnight and want to chime in, you're welcome to. Okay. So no public comment. Is there a motion?

Move to grant first reading.

Go ahead, Laura. Move to grant first reading to TO 26-14 scheduled public hearing and second reading for July 13, 2026 and advertise the same according to law.

Is there a second? Second. Is Flynn on the second? Call roll, please.

Mr. Reagan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder?

Yes.

Ms. Underhill?

I think she had to step away for a minute. She texted me.

And Mayor Hardy?

Yes.

The motion passes.

Great, thank you. We were going to put you at the top of the agenda, Mr. Clinton, but Mr. Shields said that you wanted to sit here until midnight to listen to all the conversation, so thank you for joining us.

Okay, I think we have consent up next, and I know Mr. Agin had a disclosure as well as recusal that he wanted to make.

Tonight's consent items include a contract related to Part 3 of the greening of Lincoln Phase A, which will improve storm drainage along Lincoln Avenue. As a resident of Lincoln Avenue, my property will be affected by this project because I am one resident out of Okay. So is there a

Actually, anything staff wants to mention on the consent? We have appointments and then the contracts and agreements we saw last week in work session.

I'd be happy to answer any questions on it, but I don't have anything to add from our briefing at work session.

Okay. Is there a motion on the consent agenda?

Move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Is there a second? Second. Second. Ms. Flynn on the second. You can call roll, please.

Ms. Connolly?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill?

Yes.

And Mayor Hardy?

Yes.

The motion passes. Thank you.

Ms. Reagan, you can return if you can hear us. Okay. So now we're back on Virginia Village. Mr. Shields.

So, I'll invite Mr. Matusik to come forward again and maybe we'll provide a quick update on changes we've made since the council last saw this and the other updates and then we'll go from there. Sure.

Good morning. Well, first I wanted to thank everyone for very detailed and thoughtful comments on the RFP. We're up to version five now, and it really benefited from a lot of kind of careful reviews. We've done our best to kind of take lengthy responses pretty much all the different sections that are in front of you. I think it really benefits from that clarity. We've tried to remove some of the redundancy in the last round. I think there were some paragraphs that kind of kept repeating certain topics or introductions that I think were not as necessary. The evaluation criteria has also evolved, kind of trying to tackle the neighborhood compatibility. We've updated the schedule to reflect not just additional timing, but kind of be more nuanced in terms of when we want to have everybody be working together. And it's something that we are regularly coordinating with Jones Lang LaSalle, our real estate consultant, They're going to have a much more embedded role as we move forward into this next phase in kind of setting up this evaluation committee for success. In addition to doing some pro formas on the various scenarios that are depicted here, So we're both excited, but also looking forward to the volume of work that's still ahead of us. But with that, I just wanted to kind of open things up and see if there's any additional questions. I do have a printout of the red line that I think we issued as well, if you want to jump to any specific sections. And again, before it gets published, we're happy to make, you know, any final, hopefully minor tweaks.

Before we jump in, I just wanted to thank you and the staff. I sent you all an email, but I know that a lot of the council members did have questions, and I really appreciated the Q&A document that Mr. Shields sent to us today. I thought it was really helpful and made it certain areas that were confusing to me, made it much more clear. So thank you for that work on that document.

Yes, so much so I think I asked Mr. Shields earlier that we should just post that Q&A document because I think it really is helpful answer that maybe people in the community would find beneficial as well. So thank you. Ms. Flynn.

I also want to say thank you to staff for the back and forth and engaging over the course of this process. I had a question that I just would hope you can answer given all of the public comment earlier tonight. And that goes to the RFP generally, right? We started down this road with the small area plan and comp plan sort of amendments and the RFP. And there were questions at points in time and public comment at points in time about, you know, what is the appropriate way to explore the possibilities with the development community, right? And is it through an RFP process? IS IT THROUGH SOMETHING SHORT OF AN RFP PROCESS, LIKE A REQUEST FOR COMMENTS TO UNDERSTAND, LIKE, THIS STARTED AS, WE NEED TO FIND OUT FROM THE DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY, LIKE, WHAT IS MARKETABLE, WHAT IS FEASIBLE, WHAT IS FINANCEABLE. AND YOU CAN DO THAT THROUGH DIFFERENT WAYS SHORT OF AN RFP. AND SO, CAN YOU JUST SPEAK TO KIND OF THIS PROCESS VERSUS A REQUEST FOR COMMENT, FOR EXAMPLE, BY COMPARISON, AND WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE GOTTEN VERSUS NEEDING TO CHOOSE THE PARTNER AT THIS POINT IN TIME, OR, AS WE HAD A PUBLIC COMMENTER EARLIER COMMENT, LIKE, WHY CAN'T DEVELOPERS RESPOND TO A FIRST READING OF A ZONING CODE CHANGE WHERE THEY'RE AWARE, RIGHT, THAT THE CITY IS ON THIS PATH? AND PART OF THIS IS DRIVEN BY, OR MAYBE THIS IS PRIMARILY DRIVEN BY THE LIHTC FUNDING DEADLINE. LIKE, IF THE FUNDING DEADLINE WERE NEXT SUMMER, WOULD YOU FEEL LIKE WE HAD MORE FLEXIBILITY in the zoning, like to get feedback through first reading of a zoning code update or through requests for comment, then through, you know, this sort of simultaneous process we've undertaken. I mean, it's like the right is that like it's not the elephant in the room because it's not it's not like the elephant is a couple at this point. So I mean, it's I think it's really important, right, for where we were with public comment. And I get it's twelve fifteen in the morning or we're taking a vote on issuing an RFP. So I would like you to talk to RF requests for comment.

Yeah.

Development community ability to respond to a zoning code, you know, first reading, and why we need to do it this way as opposed to those other ways.

I'll start with the easier part of that and work my way up. Part of the advantage of what we're doing and the way in which we're doing it allows us to kind of be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of simply asking for interest and curiosity, which I think we've done over the last few months, some informal conversations with housing advocates, developers, but stopping short of actually getting a detailed proposal. So even though we will be hopefully selecting a development partner, we are not approving any projects. And I think that's because we still have to see those additional details. Review groups from different departments, the planning commission, they have to kind of get their, you know, reviews completed so we can kind of assess whether or not, in addition to what's in the zoning ordinance, some other comments still need to be addressed and incorporated. So there's a lot of other steps beyond the RFP that will still have to happen. But Where we have ended up and what's in this document, I think, is going right down the middle of having just enough interest while still balancing the signal we want to send and how serious we are to move forward. And that we feel that we have enough lots purchased and consolidated where something actually meaningful could take place. And we'd rather do that sooner rather than later because costs are only going up. The need is significant. and we have to be opportunistic. As it relates to the sequencing of steps, yes, the March 2027, as we mentioned back in November of last year, is a critical milestone we would still like to achieve. Maybe we can't, maybe it's not possible, but for the time being, we are proceeding as if it's still achievable. Having said that, I don't think it diminishes the quality of the zoning changes because what we've heard consistently, and Jones-Langissel confirmed it, for this to work, and this is different. This is affordable housing. This is something that every jurisdiction struggles with. This is something that states throughout the country are beginning to customize rules for because of how difficult it is to achieve, given all the other elements, the burdens that are placed on that product. It's different from a typical SE process. And because of that, I think we're being mindful of setting aside the critical guardrails in our zoning language guardrails that we can continue to add with further evolutions of this through this fall, but creating a more predictable review process that will invite additional folks that will inevitably save money. and I think will get us to a successful outcome sooner. So that is something that's kind of driving the sequencing of steps, why we're doing it this way, why we are relying on a form-driven tool, because it does have a lot of options to address almost immediately things that we're hearing. Things like, do we want to avoid having a parking structure facing Maple? I can draw a parking setback line and just say, any parking structure has to be at least 40 feet away from a public right-of-way. Done. What else do we want to tackle? So the immediate effect that I think that tool has is really powerful in the setting that we are in. And I think in addition to affordable housing, the overlay district is just for this site. This is not something we're doing citywide. This is not something that's going to take off in every site from now on. It's going to have this anxiety and pressure on it. This is very specific. It's a surgical strike. And it's really building upon a lot of past efforts that I think were quite meaningful, very lengthy. but have kind of deviated in a way where they're just not implementable. And we want to learn from those examples because affordable housing is just not something we can continue to wait for. So part of perhaps my filter that I brought on when I got here is let's not just repeat what clearly is not working. And this is basically our way of interpreting that.

Vice Mayor.