Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It's July 23rd, and we're starting our planning board meeting. What a beautiful day. Our first item this morning is adoption of resolutions. We have one, the Alaphbeth Montessori School adequate public facilities review request. However, Commissioner Putnam cannot vote on this one. Do I have a motion for approval of this resolution?

I'll move to approve the resolution.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. 4-0, and you abstain.

Oh, I'm sorry. That's OK.

The next, we have record plats. We have two this morning. Both staff is recommending approval. The first is subdivision plat Grand Park, and the second is subdivision plat Parkview. Do I have a motion for approval of these two record plats?

And move to approve the record, Platts?

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Commissioner Bartley is remote this morning. Welcome, Mr. Bartley. So we're full commissioners today. The next is a roundtable discussion. Our parks director, Mitty Figueredo, presenting. Welcome, Director Figueredo.

Thank you so much. Good morning. So we're going to start out with telling you a little bit about our ribbon cutting at the South Germantown Rec Park new adventure playground. This playground, I think, opened Over 20 years ago, it was actually one of Mike Riley's projects back in the day, and it was due for a full renovation. You can see pictures of the renovated playground as I talk a little bit about We had over 200 attendees at the ribbon cutting. We received a proclamation that you can see there in the picture. County Council Member Marilyn Balcom spoke, and the D15 delegation and Leslie Lopez from District 39, this project is kind of like in between those two districts, presented us with a proclamation for the park. It's about two acres, and it's designed so that you can see most of the playground from wherever you stand, which is really helpful to parents when they're trying to keep an eye on multiple kids. It's designed for multi-generational play, and it has some really cool features, some of which don't exist in any of our other parks or playgrounds, including a very cool in-ground... little trampoline section that is a lot of fun. I had fun on it and so did a bunch of kids. One of the things about this park that I also think was pretty extraordinary and our team did a great job with is that we were able to preserve. We did a full renovation and yet we were able to preserve almost every single tree. In addition to that, we're going to be adding 35 more trees that we grew at Pope Farm. And we also reused a lot of the existing site furnishings. They were refurbished. And you can see in the photo there, there's a gorilla. And I think you can see maybe one other animal there. Oh, the lion, yeah. Those were animals that were in the park originally. And our facilities management team gave them a full refresh. And they were relocated to different locations in the park. It is a really special place. It's very big. You could come there and spend several hours and bring a lunch and take your kids and have a lovely afternoon. So if you get a chance to go out there, I highly recommend it. We recently celebrated the 4th of July in parks. There are two big firework displays in Montgomery County that take place on park land. One of them is the Wheaton Sparkles that happened on July 3rd and we had about 14,000 people attend that event. And then on July 4th proper, 36,000 people attended Germantown Glory at South Germantown Rec Park. about our data team quite a bit because they are extraordinary at their jobs and we're not the only ones who think so. Last week a few members of our data analytics team attended the ESRI conference in San Diego and obviously they were presenting at the conference but they also received The Special Achievement in GIS Award. This is an international award. It recognizes organizations using mapping and location-based technology in innovative, practical ways to support better decisions and services. We are apparently so respected at this conference. I feel like I have to brag on their behalf. that they were mentioned during the plenary. The work of Montgomery Parks' staff was mentioned during the plenary. And you can see here a very rare photo. This is Jack Dangermund along with our staff, Keegan Clifford, So I guess he runs Esri, and he's considered kind of the eminence grease, the sort of like leader on all of this GIS mapping. And it's apparently very hard to get a picture with him. And yet he had his picture taken with Keegan Clifford and is, by all accounts, very impressed with our work. We are known there. So our park staff led several sessions. One of them was Cultivating Community Gardens, and that was presented by Michelle Nelson, who, as you know, runs our Community Gardens program. And that was about using data to identify suitable community garden locations. We had another presentation called from field to front office by Carter Hughes from our data team, improving how field and office teams share information. And we had a third called Holistic GIS Strategy. And that was presented by Keegan Clifford, who you see here in this picture. And that was about supporting broader staff adoption of GIS tools across the organization. Keegan also served on an environment and natural resources special interest group. Again, I am really proud of this team. They are doing really incredible work, and we want to keep encouraging and supporting that. I want to shift a little bit to some of our summer camps. We talk a lot about providing more for teens to do. Teenagers need outdoor activities, and they need things to do in the summer, just like little kids, maybe for different reasons. I mentioned Camp Trail Mix a couple weeks ago. That was our camp for adults that was offered by naturalists at Meadowside Nature Center. This teen camp is called Camp Salamanders, and it's hosted by some of our naturalists from Brookside Nature Center. It's the second time that Brookside Nature Center has offered this camp. It's for kids from 11 to 13. You know, these are middle schoolers. That can be kind of a tough time. The theme is Adventures in Nature. And one of the things that I really like about this camp is you're not allowed to have a cell phone or any electronics at the camp, which, you know, getting kids off of their electronics is a real challenge, but I think it's really important for their mental and physical health. health and well-being. So they did things like ice skating, kayaking on the Anacostia, hiking the Billy Goat Trail, a high ropes course at Sandy Spring Adventure Park. and some whitewater rafting. And we know that this is a successful program because our own Dominique's son Jackson is attending the program. And he is reporting back that he is really enjoying it. And he would definitely let her know if that was not the case. Sunset yoga. This summer our activation team is offering a series of Monday night beginner sunset yoga classes at Lake Meadwood at Rock Creek Regional Park. They're from 7 to 8 p.m. They're free. You can see from that photo they're very successful. We had at the first session 125 attendees and in the second session 159 plus a dog which you might be able to see somewhere in this picture and the sessions will continue every Monday night through August 10th.

I think, in addition to the dog, I think you can see my wife in the top left corner. Oh, that's great. She's been to both of those at Lake Tatewood. I'm pretty sure that those leggings look familiar.

Well, I'm glad she's attending and enjoying it. So Josiah Henson Museum and Park partnered with eighth grade students from Rochambeau, the French international school, to create an exhibit honoring individuals who were enslaved alongside Josiah Henson in Southern Montgomery County where both the museum and the school are located. This was inspired by a class project in which students learned about diverse people and cultures whose histories and cultural contributions were ignored or frankly erased. The exhibit focuses on 16 individuals whose first names And in some cases, last names were recorded on a variety of different documents. The students used archival records to glimpse specific details of their lives, such as their birth, their purchase, or their sale. The exhibit will be on display in the museum from June 5th through September 27th. And admission to the museum is $6 for children and seniors and $7 for adults. Tuesday, July 14th, I was joined by the Montgomery County Rec Department, by our mountain biking partners from Mid-Atlantic Outdoor Enthusiasts. Yep. And the Montgomery Parks Foundation, as the county council's planning, housing, and parks committee, presented us with a proclamation in honor of National Park and Recreation Month. You can see there the rec department brought their mascot. And we had a lot of questions about where Otis and Flora were. So next year, we'll definitely make sure that they're able to attend the proclamation. And afterwards, our social media team created this video. I do whatever they tell me. Sometimes they're referencing memes that I'm not familiar with, but I'm in good hands with them, and they do a great job, and they're very creative always. And while we're on the subject of what our social media team is up to... They are doing a series about stormwater management and stream restoration. We get a lot of questions on this topic. So they have created or working on a six-part series. It's called What Are We Up To? where they focus on different topics related to water and And the first video Dominique is just going to play in a second features Aaron McArdle and Jackie Hoban. Aaron is with our PDD team and Jackie Hoban is with Park Planning and Stewardship and they're talking about stream valleys and we will show you a little clip here.

Did you know that Montgomery County Parks has over 600 miles of streams? That's like traveling from here to Atlanta, Georgia by stream.

Our park system was founded almost 100 years ago to protect the stream corridors that flow toward Washington, D.C. Our stream valley parks are downstream from all of the development in the county.

When it rains, like it did here in Sligo Creek last night, stormwater picks up pollution and rushes downstream faster than it should. So what can we do? Hi, I'm Jackie, a natural resources specialist. And I'm Erin, an environmental engineer. We work together to care for and protect Montgomery County's stream valley park system. The good news is that Parks has tools to step in and reduce this damage. This looks like building projects upstream, like this bioretention that helps slow down and filter runoff. Restoring streams like here in Sligo Creek and stabilizing outfalls to stop erosion and keep sediment from washing downstream. And planting native trees, shrubs, and perennials to trap pollutants and absorb nutrients. These efforts help to keep our streams healthy for nature, clean water, and all who enjoy them now and for generations to come.

We'll be releasing two videos a month from July through September, so keep an eye out for those. And then finally, I want to remind you all to save the date for the upcoming ribbon cutting for Bottleworks Lane on September 18th. I believe we're doing it at 5 p.m. And this is going to be a little more fun even than our normal ribbon cutting because we will... It'll be a party. There will be music. There will be food trucks, beer vendors... So mark your calendars and come celebrate the opening of this park in downtown Silver Spring with us.

This is the fastest CIP project that I have seen from the acquisition. I remember when it was taught. And then from the time that we decided to purchase, and now it's opening, I think it's a record. I don't know how long it is. It's not more than five or six years.

It's not more than, I think it's around five years.

Yeah, it's five years. We don't have the same thing.

No, you're exactly right. From acquisition to planning, design, and now construction, that is light speed.

Yeah. And I don't know how you did it, but I don't know how difficult it was to happen. But isn't that be wonderful if all of our CIP project, I know that this was a smaller, but this is amazing. Really, I had never seen something like that since these 40 years I have been here. And this is Unbelievable. It's phenomenal.

And it would have been faster, but we had to do some environmental remediation on the site. We could have actually even done it a little bit faster.

You are putting yourself on the record.

Well, I didn't worry about that. We've created a new standard for ourselves, but we're working on it. Andy Frank and his team get a lot of the credit for this.

Yeah, well, I should call you then from now on the magician Miss Figurello, especially with the video that you showed. While I have the microphone, I just make another comment that I could truly attest to this GIS team. I do not know even maybe it was before your time to come to the Parks Department that we tried with Sushi and, you know, all her team. with Hassan and everyone to make our GIS to be number one at the time that we started. And I know that one of my push and push was that we have to have our trails and all the amenities in GIS that people can find them and take advantage. And now I'm not surprised to see that the same team is still there. And they have been able to grow it and get to the point that now we are being recognized, not nationally but internationally. So that is one of the good things to come back and to see some of these things, the fruit of the work that has been taught for years, and you see that it's coming to blossoming and being recognized. It's beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I wanted to echo my congratulations or Commissioner Petwing's congratulations for the GIS team. Those kinds of honors are extremely hard to come by in that field. And I sometimes think about GIS work like in a good way, kind of like an iceberg. There's like a little bit above the surface that's visible to people, to internal teams, whether it's like a public, you know, an interactive map or some sort of product that's put out there. and a whole lot of work and processes and management under the surface that never gets seen except by other GIS professionals at places like this conference. So the fact that they thought to honor Parks GIS folks is really incredible. So congrats to them, and look forward to more good work there.

Yeah, thank you. It's so important to see, and you highlight the breadth of the work of Parks. focusing on our goals and the pros plan for exercise, social connections, environmental stewardship, and then preservation, conservation. And in each of the pieces, you've talked about, you know, it highlights one or more of those. I really love the, also, what are we up to, focusing on, you know, the environmental stewardship, you know, of preserving and our stream valleys and things like that. And I was at this Germantown ribbon-cutting. It's just a wonderful park, and park staff deserve so much credit for preserving sort of revitalizing that park. It's just really wonderful. All the delegates and others that were there, just like, oh, they were just amazed that we could do that without disturbing trees. So that was so important. So thank you for all your works. Looking forward to the Bottle Works opening. And we always appreciate seeing the breadth of your work. Thank you. Any other comments from our board members? OK, thank you so much. We're going to take a two minute break and start with our next item, item number five, development application fee update. Staff is recommending approval to update certain development application fees. Thank you. Good morning again, everyone. We're on item number five, the development application fee update, where staff is recommending approval to update certain development application fees. And to lead this discussion is Robert Cronenberg, Deputy Director. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. Robert Cronenberg, Deputy Director. And joining me up here today is Chris Pfeiffer, who's the Chief of the Communications and Engagement Division. And immediately to my right is Parker Smith, who is our Newest supervisor of the information counter, doing a fantastic job of kind of reevaluating what the information counter can do and how we can make that more effective in the department. And before I turn it over to Parker to go through a lot of the updates that we have, just wanted to mention that a year ago was probably the last time that we came to you with a fee update. And it was being somewhat reactive because we had a new plan type for the expedited approval plans to come to you. And so in order for us to start charging for those plans, we had to have a fee assigned to it. And I know the board at the time said, can we look a little bit more comprehensively at some of our fees that we have with the intent in mind to try and capture some of the work that we do, make that more balanced with how we charge our fees, and work with the development community on that in terms of the types of applications. Excuse me. We have... We went through all of the fees that we charge and all the application types internally and then really honed in on some of the ones that we felt were the ones that needed to be modified, specifically the expedited approval plans and our administrative subs. And Parker will go into that in a little bit more detail, and that's in the staff report as well. We also evaluated ones that included that we had staff come to us and say, we really think we should be charging fees. And I think the answer in the end was, no, I don't think we should be charging some fees on these. And then we also looked at how we could maybe lower some fees on some of the other application types, which is not very typical when we look at agencies and how they evaluate fee types and structures. I'm going to turn it over to Parker. He's going to walk through everything that we have in the staff report today, and we're here to answer any questions. And we do have some examples to share with you as well to give you a little bit better understanding of kind of the impact or potential impact, I think, of some of the fee increases.

Yeah, thanks, Robert. Yeah, Parker Smith, Information Services Team Supervisor for the Information Counter. Yeah, so as Robert said, I'll be walking through some of these changes. Just as background, these sections on the screen authorize the planning board to establish fees by resolution. As he mentioned, historically we've updated fees sort of on an as-needed basis. Typically, that means one or two things. Either a new application type is being created, and therefore we need to establish a fee for it. or we've come to the board with a periodic increase based on inflation and CPI more specifically. So yeah, we did conduct a review of our current fee structures specifically for the relationship between staff effort and the fees and trying to bring those sort of more in alignment specifically in regard to the expedited approval plans that I think we're all sort of still figuring out what that balance is. So we analyzed really all of our fees, most specifically concept plans, expedited approval plans, and the administrative subdivisions most associated with those expedited approval plans. We also looked at forest conservation plans, including those FCPs, FCP exemptions, and natural resource inventories. We also looked at record plats and our policy for charging fees for preliminary and site plan amendments. So we do have, I think you can itemize it into eight proposed fee changes. First being expedited approval plans, specifically those CRR plans that we're starting to see really pick up steam in terms of how many we're receiving. administrative subdivision plans associated with those same CRR plans, record plats and the minor subdivision sort of designation within the record plots, NRI FSDs and other forest conservation plans. of all kinds, both exemptions and plans and amendments. Preliminary plan amendments, we specifically looked at with a TMAC, TDM sort of policy change that's necessitated that fee change, and then site plan amendments as well. So we sort of started, or one thing that was brought to our attention was these concept plans, which have We've received a lot more of in the last year. You can see that 42 is, I think, the most we've ever received in a fiscal year. They were created in 2015 and are a free application type, so that's sort of what kicked off us trying to understand if that's sort of appropriate for this kind of plan type. It's a high-level review that is really just one round of comments. It includes ourselves as well as the other DRC agencies, and it concludes after the DRC meeting. So nothing is formally approved. It really is just one round of comments to help applicants identify what the issues would be if they were to move forward with a different plan type, and identify really if it's feasible to continue pursuing a particular development idea. And the other aspect, and I think what's really fueling the 42 number you see on the screen there, is that they are a prerequisite to submitting an expedited approval plan. So along those lines, The expedited approval plans are sort of one, I see it as a subset of our two groups of applicants for concept plans. These expedited approval plans obviously require the concept plan, and therefore what they're bringing to the concept plan process is pretty complicated. It's really like getting a first review of all the issues to get them on the table for the agencies, make them aware, make them understand what's coming down the pipe to facilitate the beginning of that process, especially given the expedited timelines down the road. The other is sort of a very different subset of applicants who typically are trying to understand if an administrative subdivision plan is feasible. So they usually are sort of small-scale property owners or developers who have one lot and would love to add one unit or two units, typically in residential zones. Real quick, if I may.

can interject real quick. We had a DRC meeting in June, and to Parker's point on the second tier of groups that come to us, we had two applicants that came to us. One was out of the country, and he was reviewing this, and he said, this is amazing. He said, no other jurisdiction lets us go through a process like this without charging a fee. And he was just submitting something that was a two to three lot subdivision. But he didn't really know enough to know, should I proceed? And so it was good to get that information on the record and have everyone hear that it's a working process. This thing works for them. You know, those are the ones that, like Parker said, they're probably the one to three type of units that are coming in. And they're the ones that really need this. The ones that we see that go into an expedited approval plan, they know the process. They know the drill for the most part. And so they're trying to get all the red flags kind of out of the way before they take the next step.

Yeah, and I can sort of further speak to that. My experience at the information counter, we recommend people to submit concept plans all the time. We provide at the information counter zoning expertise and understanding of our processes, but we can't decide or provide input on what DOT or what these other agencies might see as a red flag for future development. And the people that come to the information counter, again, they're not experienced applicants. They're property owners that just want to understand if this is a possibility for them. So that's all sort of leading to our conclusion of we do not recommend a fee for concept plans. We just don't really want to discourage property owners and prospective applicants from having that tool to gauge feasibility and whether development ideas are possible. And you'll see later in the presentation, I think we have increases in fees elsewhere that sort of cover that additional staff time required for the expedited approval process as a whole. So that leads me to administrative subdivision plans. Just a quick background. Similar to the concept plans, You have some that are really just three lots or less, and they get a 90-day review period, which is less than the preliminary plan review period. But these administrative subdivision plans are also used in lieu of a full preliminary plan for the expedited approval plans. So I think that was really necessitated or tied to the reduction of the review period, the 120 days down to 90 days reduction. And even that is sort of submitted in advance of the expedited plans at 60 days. But I think when we established that, the fee wasn't as much considered as the review period. So we're seeing a lot of these administrative subdivision plans with preliminary plan complexity because they're proposing complicated commercial to residential conversions, but they are reviewed in 90 days and sort of given the same fee as some of these three lot subdivisions.

And I think historically, when the administrative subdivision process was created, it really was created to deal with the one to three lots so that we could move those ahead. We knew that the primary issues would be, I think, for the majority of those types of applications. Since it is a lesser time period review, from 120 down to 90 days, we felt like, let's make the leap and see how we can apply the administrative subdivisions to our expedited process. And this is also a primer as we look to a lot of what we're doing in the county for some of the smaller lot subdivisions that we want to see, we'd like to see. This is the avenue to do that. It does tee up the expedited plans, but it also gives us a lot of ability to kind of make some good judgment calls using this process and using the 90-day time period review versus the 120-day.

Robert, I have a question here. I'm trying to make sense out of this administrative subdivision review plans. I'm confused. Maybe we needed to get some guidance on different steps of the review. I thought that administrative, when you call it administrative, I know you have told me that, but it never sit in my head to fully understand what exactly that thing means. Administrative means that it doesn't come to the planning board. I'm just assuming. You and I have discussed this, that if it's administrative, it's usually, as what you said, it's one to three lot subdivision. And it could be done with the director and staff. And they usually, I understand that sometimes it may come in front of the planning board if there are some public oppositions or flag lot or some other things that I totally understand that. But I'm just talking in general, if there is none of those issues that requires them to come in front of the planning board, it could be done at the director level, and it doesn't come to us. So that's clear to me. And that's mostly for the smaller things that actually, now that I have the microphone, I say that. If we want to have one or single family lots to have multiple units, I think this subdivision is extremely important. If you want to have them duplexes or triplexes, and I have discussed that we need even to make it easier for our people, because they're not big developers. They're just smaller property owners that they want to do it. Now, put that aside and we'll discuss it, but I say that we need to streamline that process. What is the administrative subdivision plans for expedited review? Usually, they are more complex. Why do we call them administrative? What are the processes? Is a subdivision And then after subdivision, they have to go to maybe, you know, the regular process is that sketch plan and then the preliminary plan and site plan. But I don't understand why they be called this administrative subdivision. Can you explain?

So I'll start, and I think you've covered a lot of that with what you just described. what you just said. And it is a little bit of a misnomer, especially when you tie that to a different plan type. And again, when the administrative subdivision plan was created, or the plan type, it's still addressing subdivision chapter 50. So it's still addressing what we would do in a preliminary plan, but in It was always intended that it could be signed by the director unless we had major issues with it, and then we'd kick it up to the board for the board to make a decision on that. And so you're right.

So that's true for bigger subdivision also?

No, that's just for the administrative subdivision. Okay. So when we started looking at the expedited approval plans, and keep in mind there's four different expedited processes. The one that we're seeing a lot more of now is the CRR, which is the Commercial to Residential Reconstruction. We wanted to... have the same mindset to expedite the plan as much as possible. And the way to do that was through the administrative subdivision process. Again, it's still addressing all of the preliminary plan findings, conditions, but it's a better avenue because it has a shorter time period. That's probably the more simple. It's the simplest answer for you. It's not necessarily administrative.

The name is confusing, yeah. The name administrative is confusing.

Right. But the preliminary plan, maybe the way to think about it is a preliminary plan is always the parent plan. And other ones come after that. So whether it's a sketch plan or if it's a site plan that come after that. The preliminary plan is the one that establishes the lots and the easements and the dedications. We still get that with the administrative subdivision as well. And all the plans that we're seeing require that. They require dedications and easements and master plan conformance and all of that. In this case, an expedited approval plan eliminates a sketch and a site plan. It's a new plan type. And so we couldn't just take that alone by itself without having some kind of chapter 50 subdivision review to it. And so this was the best avenue for it. So hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hopefully I will then ask it again in the future.

Okay. So to further complicate the discussion, the relationship between these administrative subdivision plans and preliminary plans, what we are recommending is to charge a preliminary plan fee for the administrative subdivision plans that are specifically being used for a future expedited approval plan, or I guess a concurrent expedited approval plan. This much more so lines up the staff time review required to go through the complex issues that are involved in a commercial to residential reconstruction. It's just much more in line with the content and the staff time required to review these plans. As we were just talking about, it's really a preliminary plan sized and you know, level review. These are much different cases than the other sorts of subdivision plans that, you know, if you're proposing three lots or less, I think a flat fee of around $4,000 is more appropriate. So that is our recommendation.

I couldn't agree with you more on that.

So that's our recommendation for these sorts of administrative subdivision plans. The preliminary plan Fee structure in general is a little bit complex, but here's an example of the difference between us charging a flat fee and us treating it like it's a preliminary plan. I'd be happy to, I have a backup slide of the full sort of structure of the preliminary plan. There's sort of tranches of square footages and the first 100 units cost 385 per unit and everything after that is 105 per unit. So I'd be happy to sort of walk through more sort of variables there. But this is essentially our approach to increase these fees and to bring them more in line with the level of review that's being required. And, you know, a level of review that's happening in a shorter time frame.

So I'm a little bit confused. If you go back, so based on what we have right now, it's $4,000, and then based on this new would be $46,000 or $47,000.

But only for those expedited plans.

Yeah, but you were not charging them before for preliminary plan, or do we charge them for preliminary plan?

We were just charging that $4,200.

Yeah, you were charging that for just preliminary plan and administrative plan, and then you would charge. Do they have any other application fees, or that was it?

In most cases, there will be probably a forest conservation plan fee, which is not going to be, I mean, the amount that you would see here. But all applications usually have some kind of forest conservation fee.

Yeah, but no other site plan or preliminary plan. Yeah.

Well, there's the expedited plan, right. Thank you, Parker. But there's not another sketch or site plan associated with that.

When you say expedite, I just want to see how much was the total fee they had to pay all the way until they got approved versus this proposed fee. That would be good to know. Is it $4,200 versus $47,000 or... Was it more before?

So it depends on each individual circumstance in each project. So if a project has a forest conservation plan associated with it, there'll be a separate fee for that. And in this case, if it's an expedited approval plan, there's a fee for that. This is a hypothetical example here. This isn't a specific project, so we could give you a different example that has twice as many dwelling units and will have different numbers in here. The point is that for the administrative subdivision that's associated with an expedited approval plan up until this point, so as an example, the very next item you have today, the crescent, In Bethesda, that is an expedited approval plan. You'll see associated with that one of the things you'll be deciding on is an administrative subdivision. The fee associated with that administrative subdivision was $42.50. But under this plan, what's proposed here, it would have been treated just like a regular preliminary plan because the effort is just like a preliminary plan review. So in this example, the $42.50 would be $46,940. I don't know what it would have been for the Bethesda Crescent. We haven't done that.

Yeah, I totally understand it, but I'm saying that you have been very much under charge. Are we on top of the 4,250? Did we... had another fee for expedited review.

Yes, we'll get to that.

OK. And do they still have to pay the other fee also if they paid for the 6-9-40? Do they still have to pay the expedited fee?

Because they're different plans, different applications. This application's just for the administrative subdivision. They'll still have to pay the fee for the expedited approval plan application.

And that hasn't changed. I mean, that's the same as it is now.

And just to confirm one of these lines, as we're talking about the previous plan, if you're splitting a lot that's oversized into two, that kind of administrative sub-depletion plan still doesn't get kicked into the expedited thing, just to make sure that I'm following the curve.

And I think it might be helpful to just view this slide as the subdivision fee. So whether it was previously an administrative, like it's being called an administrative subdivision or drastically increasing, as you can see on the screen, the subdivision fee. then there's sort of what we would think of as the site plan fee, which is the expedited plan.

This is more for sort of dividing up a large-scale lot into fee-simple sale for, say, a townhome or a set like that. This is what that is addressing is an undercharge for essentially getting skipped site plan, and this is substituting it for that, more or less.

Okay, so... And that brings us to the expedited approval plan fee. So... We've had 10 expedited approval plans submitted, one for mixed income housing, and the other nine were all these commercial to residential reconstruction plans. The current fees, again, do not reflect the time and resources required to review these plans in the expedited time frame. And just to reiterate, there's a great benefit to these CRRs, including increased certainty, reduced review time, and potential for payment in lieu of taxes. So we're recommending an increase in the residential base fee and the per unit fee for CRR plans. As shown on the screen, we're increasing the base fee from around $10,000 to $15,000 and the per unit fee from $250 to $325 per unit. That's about a 40% increase in the base fee and the 30% in the per-unit fee. We are not touching the non-residential fees that are included in this fee type. You can see the example that we provided for a 150-unit project, about an increase of $15,000. I think it's fair to say that this was less out of balance than the administrative subdivision fee for these types of plans, but we also, given that it's such an abbreviated review time of just 60 to 65 days, we thought it warranted an increase in the fee as well.

And we did provide, I believe, an analysis in here that shows whether it's the current fee at $4,800 using this example or the proposed fee, that's still less than what would be paid for a sketch plan and a site plan. So the expedited approval plan is still, it's a good deal. It's a good deal all around from a fee schedule to a certainty schedule, a timing, and the ability to apply a pilot to your site as well.

Why is it less? Because when I was in DPS, We had a lot of experience with these fees. We had to update it. We had to consult and review because it was enterprise. But when it was expedited, that staff had to work maybe longer with their overtime. We charge more for expedited than regular fees. I think it is fair that When it is expedited and you combine all the other plans into one, it shouldn't be less. It's a fair thing to do because you have to condense and you have to spend more staff time to do it.

So it's a great point, and we had this discussion a year ago where we had not received any kind of expedited approval plan. At the time, there was kind of a push to charge a fee so that we're enticing that kind of development to come in. We really wanted to promote that. And it was still less than the two separate fees, as you've noted. And the discussion we had was we don't want to, We're trying to encourage people to submit. And I think we've come a year later, and we're saying, you're right, that we need to be charging more because we're providing a lot more service to do this in an expedited time frame. And it's a savings, but at the same time, it's one plan type. And so we're trying to keep that in balance. I will defer to the board as to whether or not this is the right amount, but we felt like this is an increase over last year to respond to, I think, the board's concerns about not encouraging or charging too much of a fee that's not going to encourage the plan types that we were really trying to promote.

I do agree with you. We don't want to increase the fees. And I always said that we need to encourage them. But This sort of works because we are not covering enough fees to pay. And every year, we have to go to, you know, and ask general bond to cover these. And it's a balance that needs to be made that do we want that we recover the cost or do we want that the general bond to pay for the shortcoming, and it's something that we have to think about and see what is fair to do. Understood.

On page six of the report, we did show you an example. I think that we lifted from a year ago that shows you kind of what the existing fee for a CRR project would be, what that fee type would be if you applied a sketch in a site, and then kind of what that delta would be. It's not – I mean, it's still less than, but it's not as far off, I think, as what we're showing.

Can I just say one thing? Why don't we – those are all great questions. We have some more to go through. Okay. Let's go through them all. Please note your – and then we'll come back and talk holistically about the fees, if that's okay. If that's okay? Okay.

Yeah. And absolutely, I was just going to mention that, you know, a factor in increasing the fees for the general expedited process – also includes that subdivision fee that you saw was pretty drastically being increased as well. Okay, so moving along, forest conservation fees, we've made sort of marginal increases to just to cover the amount of staff review time that is being observed as being needed specifically for field work and site visits for those sorts of plan types. So here's just a quick table of the new fees, increasing NRI fees to $1,000 and exemptions to $500. I personally am a big fan of getting those to round numbers. Increasing the per lot fee and per square foot fee for FCPs and increasing the FCP amendment fees just by a little bit. We also look at record plats. So our current fee structure doesn't distinguish between different kinds of record plats, of which there are two main kinds. The first is minor subdivisions, and the second is sort of all other record plats. We can just call them standard record plats. It represents about a quarter of the plats we've recorded in the last five years, these minor subdivisions. And really, they just take less time to review. So we propose sort of adjusting the fee schedule based on that. So we're decreasing the fee for minor subdivisions. from $3,200 to $2,500 and increasing the standard record plat fee from $3,200 to $3,500, really just to bring the fees that we're charging more in line with the staff time required to really review those sorts of plats. Another sort of fee update that we're instituting is in response to a bill from the county council that removed the Article 2 of Chapter 42A, Transportation Demand Management. This bill requires MCDOT to notice employers if they want to modify or terminate their TDMs or TMAGs. These TDMs and TMAGs are often tied up with conditions of approval or sort of within those conditions of approval and the conditions of MCDOT approval letters. So all of that really is a long way of saying that this necessitates a process to amend a preliminary plan to sort of adjust those, adjust or remove those TDMs and TMAGs. So we are proposing to recommend an administrative review for the specific purpose of removing a TDM or TMAG and charging sort of administrative fee of $1,000 for that pretty straightforward administrative review. And then I think lastly, we wanted to clarify our policy and sort of how we charge plan amendments. That's site and preliminary plan amendments. We often get amendments that aren't proposing new density, but for some other reason. classified as major so we're just clarifying that the base fee used to calculate sort of normal preliminary plan fees should be used and we're sort of zeroing out the additional density factor there and then clarifying that increases in density you should only be charging for the additional density so if you know, a 10,000 square foot building is adding 5,000 square feet. It's that 5,000 square feet that we're charging for. So just a quick summary of everything we've discussed and sort of the changes we're proposing. Administrative subdivision plans for the expedited approvals are going to be treated like a preliminary plan for fee purposes. The expedited approval plans will get... The increases you see to 15,000 base fee, 325 per unit. We're not touching the non-commercial fees there, or non-residential fees there. Increases more or less across the board for forest conservation fees to cover site visits and field work. The distinguishing between minor subdivisions and standard record plats to align with the staff time there. and creation of this TDM TMAG sort of process for $1,000, and then, again, clarifying the preliminary plan and site plan amendment fees. So that's it for me today. But happy to discuss, of course, whatever you'd like in terms of those fees. Yeah?

Yeah, thank you for doing a deep dive and looking into the fee structure. It was needed, and we asked for it, and thank you for doing that. Well, a couple questions. One is, if these requested fees went into effect, what would the big picture overall magnitude of you think you would get for fee increases next, you know, like total? Like, say today we get, I don't know, $2,300,000 for fees. based on workload and kind of your project, do you think that, where do you think we would be 12 months from now? And then the other is, as you think about that, Commissioner Petterm talked about, you know, if, you know, in DPS, people, if they had to do overtime in order to expedite a plan, they should be charged for the overtime. But my question is, Sometimes the way you look at this, too, is what are you not doing by spending a lot of time doing these expedited plans? Is there an opportunity to cause those things you're not doing by doing these expedited plans? You're not able to get to something else, so you need more. So you need the extra funds to pay for his staff to get to do something? I mean, just could you?

I'll try to answer some of those questions. And we didn't do an analysis of kind of what what a projection would be if, you know, we applied these new fees, you know, over a certain time period. It's really hard to gauge because when we were looking at this, you know, back in the fall, our projections were kind of flat and we didn't think we'd be even close to the target that we were The expedited approval plans have definitely kind of kicked it up a notch in terms of the types of applications that are coming in. They're very resource heavy. So not only our staff that's having to devote a lot of time, because we're doing something in 60 to 65 days versus something that, if you took two plans together, could be a couple hundred days, depending on how long it takes for people to submit and move it ahead. So it's definitely... It's definitely a little bit more intense, and it's not just one team. It's all of the teams are kind of – it's all hands on deck. And it's not just us. It's the other agencies as well that are really, I think, trying to manage this because when these plans come in, it really is you have to devote a ton of time to it. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just that that's the reality of it, that we have a lot of resources that are going to be needed, that are needed right now. And I probably have a lot of staff looking at me from the back and other areas going, we need more staff. And that is very true because it's what we're seeing with we have 10 applications in and we have a few more in the queue. They take a lot of time. I don't have an answer for you in terms of is it a 20% increase, a 30% increase. It will be an increase if we keep the projection of application types coming in that we've seen over the last probably three or four months. But I don't have a good answer for you as to what that increase would be. Are we going to balance kind of our staff time and the amount of fees that we charge?

OK. Well, big picture, I'm in general agreement with which your proposal increases. And I think if the board were to approve this, whatever we approve, just to keep monitoring staff time and the amount of fees that we come in and how it works. And so that maybe I think every year was, do you come every year and talk about these? Or it would be good if you could come next year. And how are we doing against COVID?

We definitely can do that. We can provide an update. Typically, as Parker mentioned up front, it's kind of as needed. But if you want a briefing this time next year just to give you an update on where we stand with some of these application types, the fees, we definitely can do that. Yeah.

And my only other question is a comment on the concept plan. It's great that you have those. there would be more of them because you're catching there's a good example to catch things but go too far or like if you looked at how many you get versus all applications you get is it like 2% of Or in like 10% of all the things you have to review, have a concept plan? Or is it, you know?

I'd say 10% is probably a good number. We're seeing an increase in the number of application types for concept plans. And, you know, as a lot of the smaller lot developers are kind of getting wind of the concept plan and what it can do, we're seeing more activity on that end.

That's great. Yeah.

And concept plans are what we've agreed to with DPS as the plan type because it's free for well and septic. So if you want a PERC test, it used to be a preliminary plan application you'd file, you'd have to pay a fee, and that was years ago. We changed it to concept plan in 2015 to make it easier so that we're not charging that fee. And it's not something that's more of a burden for DPS as well to monitor. So it's probably 10%, though.

If I could add to that, there may be some applicants who are paying attention to this discussion this morning. And so in some ways, I want to kind of put them on notice, too, of the importance of those concept plan conversations. Yes, they're free. But the hope is that they make the process later more efficient. But that only happens if the applicants are responsive to the comments that they received during the concept plan phase. And so they're really helpful for us and for them. And so if we start to notice that we're providing all of this effort, and it's not just us, but it's our partner agencies, Providing all this effort through the concept plan phase, providing comments that are not then reflected in the applications that come forward, we might have to think again about how that process works and the fact that we're not charging any fee for that. Right.

And that's one of the reasons I would say come back. How many are you doing? How much time you're spending in the concept? Yep.

Because then it's not even saving us time because we find ourselves spinning our wheels, making the same exact comments. And when we're talking about an expedited approval plan, then there's less time for those to be addressed in that review process. The other thing I would say is we'll be coming forward to you in the coming months with our budget proposal for FY28. And as you know, as part of that, we will be looking at our expectations for the Development Review Special Revenue Fund that these fees go directly into. And what we can do at that time is take a look at maybe last year's application fees, what we collected in FY26, and see what we would have collected if we had these fees in place, just to give you a sense of how our revenue would have been different the past year. And we can do that in the context of this budget request. Great, great.

Other comments or questions from the board members?

Oh, okay. I would defer to Mitch. No, I think this is good. I like the idea that, again, with the concept plan of allowing folks to come in, and I think that that's useful for the type of small, you know, it's a tweak for that kind of mid-range style housing that I think we're trying to encourage, generally speaking. So that part I really like. I like to keep that. I like keeping that as a free option. The only other comment is, you know, it's not the biggest part of it, but when comparing with other jurisdictions, where do we fit, you know, particularly with ones around PG power, et cetera? Like, what do we fit with other jurisdictions on the fee schedules?

I'll give you a little – it's not the straightest answer other than we're higher than the other jurisdictions in terms of fees. But it's really hard to compare apples to apples with other jurisdictions because our plan types are different in some cases as theirs are. And their process might be a little different in terms of are they doing more up front during a development process or are they kicking things to a permit stage? Yeah, to permitting. And so it's really hard, but we did originally do a very back of the envelope fee evaluation and didn't want to share that with you because it was just so out of whack because of the things I just mentioned. And so it's really, really hard to compare that. But we are higher.

another way I had a similar question but another way that I was thinking about this as well because we keep coming back to like staff level of effort we talked about a lot like we we know that we need more staff to take care of well things that already were happening and much to say nothing of like the expedited approval plans but is there any way to compare like with other jurisdictions their staffing levels relative to the amount of applications they receive and kind of the time it requires just to also have kind of that in our back pocket, you know, some sort of ratio of hours necessary and staff available to do the work and kind of how we stack up with our friends around the region. Because I think that, you know, come budget season, maybe that could be another interesting way for everyone to think about kind of what's required and how we're doing.

We can definitely look at some of the larger jurisdictions that might be comparable to kind of what we do and what our process is. And when we initially started this a year ago, we did start looking at other jurisdictions, but we also were asking the question about, okay, we have a revenue fund here that we are supporting, and that's supporting kind of what we do. Do the other jurisdictions have a similar type of structure? And in some cases, the answer is no. In some cases, it is. And That really was dependent on what kind of staff was dedicated, I think, to those different fee structures in our program. But we can definitely look at that and try to compare it as closely as possible.

It's very difficult because at DPS we try to do the same thing. I think that OLO had done a study a few years ago, and you may want to start with that. Of course, that was some time ago, but you would get the same answer you just explained. that it's just such a difference. But I agree, in general, we are higher. And we have heard it from a lot of developers also for good reason or whatever that we are higher. But just finish a few things that I was saying before. The concept plan is very important. DPS has that also. They provide free consultation for commercial and residential. And a lot of people, especially small residential units, they take advantage. They could just go online and schedule, and they just come and they meet. And it is a very good public service that we provide. I think it's a good idea to check to see how it's impacting the things that But even though at one point you want to go and charge it, I recommend that we don't charge for the small residential, especially that we are thinking to make it more possible to build duplexes and triplexes that smaller developers and homeowners, they should make it easier and not cumbersome for them to do that. So I really support what you have been saying and also support that you didn't raise the fees for the smaller lots. As I suggested, I think we should expedite our administrative review for less than three lots. That helps a lot for people because we are not seeing a lot of those things are happening. The other thing is that the effective date of July 1, August 1 of 2026, that doesn't give a lot of developers, especially that some The fees that are $200, $300, I understand. It's not a big deal, but I think it's a good public service to our development community to give them more time for that because it would be a big increase. I don't know, maybe not for them because they have, I don't know, I don't want to even say anything here, but I think it's a good public service. We give them more time, maybe rather than first of August, we say end of December. Give everybody, actually, even for the smaller residentials, 400, 500, maybe more. We give them a few more months to know that. And this gives us some time to put everything on the website. We give them more notice and understanding that this is coming. This doesn't give anybody anything. So I really support that we give our public more notice. That is a good public service to do. Also, You haven't raised it a lot, but we have a lot of issues that people, they don't come for amendment of reforestation. So if you could make the fees not to be high, that people don't shy away coming to us. for NRI FSD. It's important. This is good environmental service, again, especially for the smaller residential homeowners that they should be able to come here. And I think that's all my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. And just to respond, I think the You're not seeing as many admin subs that are not associated with the expedited approval plan because we are trying to do as much as we can to keep those. going to the director. And so we do try quite a bit. But there is that fine line as to if we do get correspondence, if we get opposition, we have to evaluate that and see kind of how that's pertinent to the plan or not. But we are doing more in terms of making sure that we can keep those administrative

align with the name yeah yeah and and i'm even suggesting that uh the ones that is uh being signed by the director if you could make it easier for them to do because that even takes time takes seven eight months and it it's expensive for the people to hire engineers and do that so you know and

And just one more reaction, and I'll defer to the board as to the effective date. We chose August 1st just because we felt like that was a good time period before we get into the September board activity dates and so forth. But again, I'll defer to the board if you want to push it. December is a little too far out there if you want us to kind of come back and evaluate kind of what the impact would be with fees. But again, we picked a date because it was more aligned with the end of the period where our activity ends and where it's going to pick up again, I think, in September.

I totally get it. The point is that we need to give our public more notice. That's it. This doesn't give anybody any notice at all. And I just believe it's not right. We are sitting here serving our public. So I don't know. I'll leave it to the rest of the board.

I didn't pick up on the effective date, but I don't think we want to push it too far. And maybe it's up to maybe a month or two to give, because I think August 1 is around the corner. But I would be open to September 1st, October 1st, but not further than that. I don't know what other people are thinking.

Yeah, I think September. I mean, September 1st, roughly a little more than a month from now. A month periods of time is not an unusual notice period.

Well, is it already on the website? I think we should give the public at least a month notice after the time that it is being announced that these fees are being increased. Give them a month notice. So when you put it there, Chris, you know better.

So am I hearing September 1st?

Yeah, September 1st.

All right. I have a small question about the various forest conservation increases. You mentioned that I know that these are not... Each one of these is fairly minimal, so I know it's not a huge kind of impact. I'm just trying to kind of understand... The reason, because it sounds like in the past, sometimes the reasons have been just kind of keep pace with inflation. In this case, you mentioned that it's sort of to track like the observed amount of time that staff is spending for field work and other things. And I'm just wondering, has like the complexity of applications changed in that regard? Or are there more demands on staff for these plan, for like forest conservation plans that just require more time than they used to? Has something changed that impacts the amount of staff time?

Thank you for the question. I think it is the latter. It's more staff time to be able to go out and devote kind of to the site visit, to making sure that they're documenting everything correctly. And the NRI FSD is really the first thing that comes to us. So when we get the NRI FSD, we somewhat automatically know that there's going to be another wave that follows. And so there's a time period where we have to review that, and that's by code. But it really is reflective of the amount of staff time that we're having to devote to go out to these sites. And we're – you know, Christina and Amy's team are being very creative on who they can tap into, who they can use to do that, and it's – I think the fee increases are fairly nominal compared to everything else that we're looking at.

Yeah, no, I agree with that for sure. Also, the other question just related to this is kind of looking at the fee schedule here. And I know this is maybe getting a little bit into the weeds, but a typical application who would need to do an NRI FSD, they would basically need to do that and then come down to the second half of this table, the forest conservation plan, and choose one of those applications. paths that's correct okay so it's kind of one and basically one and one from the top and the bottom of this table okay so in terms of the net impact i think that that helps clarify for me kind of what what we're talking about yeah i i agree it's fairly nominal it's i i agree that it's kind of it's important to track obviously the level of effort and try to keep pace um with with that um my just just quickly i just had another kind of bigger picture comment on the uh expedited approval plans and administrative subdivisions, those are obviously like the bigger changes that we're proposing. And I understand all the reasons why, and I think those make a lot of sense. It also is the reality that right now, you know, you mentioned we've received, I think, 10 CRRs in the past, was that in the past year, or we're currently in the past year. It's maybe the largest kind of group of plans or applications that we're seeing right now. We're seeing a lot of it, and I think that that's both good, but also, of course, a burden on staff, given all the things you've talked about. And so my slight concern is kind of if we institute both of these together, both of these increases together, the administrative to match the preliminary plan, fee schedule, and then the EAP, which is like a 5,000 increase of base and plus the, I think it was 75 on a per unit basis. Does that start to rate limit kind of the amount of applications we're going to see coming in the door? So in other words, and I have no idea if kind of these fees impact kind of the go, no-go decision on that level for people considering CRRs, but I am kind of wondering like, if it does kind of blend in that direction, are we kind of potentially seeing fewer coming in because of these increases, which maybe decreases the burden? You know what I mean? There's sort of a sliding scale effect.

I think that's a good question. I haven't, you know, I think we would hear from any developer that the fees have an impact on kind of what is submitted. I honestly think it's kind of in two tranches because it's we have groups that are coming in with these EAP plans that are predominantly townhouse developments. And so I think that's going to be a little different than the ones coming in with the multifamily because for the multifamily, they're really applying the pilot. And I think, to me, that's a bigger distinction about kind of what the cost saving is. And the ones coming in with the townhouses are really doing it because it's getting them to the finish line faster.

Right, right. Yeah. So for the larger, for example, the one we're about to talk to right now, they're taking advantage of the pilot. And so this likely wouldn't. The pilot is a much bigger, in theory, financial incentive. Okay, yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. I think all of this seems fair to me, and I think with the September 1st effective date, I think that's a reasonable change to make. Great, great. Thank you.

And if the board's ready to kind of move ahead, we did have a resolution. So the resolution was ready. I think we'll just have to make the change on the effective date. But thank you so much.

Yes. Commissioner Bartley, any questions or comments?

Questions or comments from me? Another outstanding presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. So do I have a motion to recommend approval of the development application fee updates and resolution with an effective date of September 1, 2026?

I'll move to approve the recommend approval of fees and updates with the change in the date.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Thank you so much. We'll just take a two-minute break and start with our next item. Bethesda Crescent Administrative Subdivision Commercial to Residential Reconstruction Forest Conservation Plan and Adopting of the Resolution. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number six, Bethesda Crescent Administrative Subdivision Commercial to Residential Reconstruction Plan, Forest Conservation Plan, and we'll also adopt the resolution. This morning, we have Mr. Gatling presenting this item. Welcome.

Thank you. For the record, Saquon Gatling with West County Planning presenting this presentation for Bethesda Crescent. This is West County's first expedited approval plan, which is the commercial to residential reconstruction, so we're happy to bring this forward. The proposals are made up of three applications before us today. It's the admin sub number 6-2026-0160. The expedited approval plan itself, number E-2026-0040, and the associated Forest Conservation Plan F-2026-0750. Located in downtown Bethesda, falls within the 2025, but that's a downtown master plan, minor master plan amendment area in the 2017, but that's the downtown plan with the zoning as shown on the screen. It's an assemblage of four properties, really anchored by the property at the address you see on the screen. A closer look here at the subject property, you can see it's approximate to both the Bethesda Metro Red Line Station and the Bethesda Future Purple Line Station and Capitol Crescent Trail. Also lies at the intersection of three state roads, Old Georgetown, East West Highway, and Wisconsin Avenue. Taking a closer look here, the property is outlined in red on the screen. It is served by two alleys which aren't connected today. It's a great change here that disconnects this alley that allows access to 4600 East West and 4650, and this alley from Montgomery Avenue leading to underground parking for the Wisconsin Avenue address sites, and also some back of house surface parking. The corner property here, 7475 Wisconsin, also serves as the public entrance to the underground metro station entrance, which will be retained with this proposal. As far as the administrative subdivision, we're looking at a proposal for a subdivision of three lots. 4600 East-West Highway will remain existing in its own lot. but we're looking at a proposed lot 15 and a proposed lot 16. Proposed lot 15 here outlined in red will be the focus of the expedited plan and proposed lot 16 will be reserved for a future phase two. The proposal consists of a replacement of the two office buildings at the corner here with one mixed use development in phase one. Phase one consists of a mixed-use building with up to 11,500 square feet of new retail uses, commercial uses. The figure you see on the first line here includes commercial uses that are existing and will remain on the other properties of the entire site, just to be clear about that. Their residential includes 17.6% in PDUs, up to 420 multifamily units, and the applicant is making use of density from the Bethesda overlay zone to help bring this project to fruition. To talk about the transportation and access, we have Leah Daniels here from the transportation team. Leah.

Hi, good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the planning board. I'm here to talk to you about the transportation elements of this project. The property has frontages along Wisconsin Avenue and East West Highway. Both meet the minimum right of way requirements. And the frontages along each property are both ADA compliant with the minimum of 10 foot sidewalks and six foot street buffers with variable widths as recommended by the Bethesda Downtown Streetscape Plan. The access is provided, as Saquon mentioned, via existing curb cuts along Waverly Street and Montgomery Avenue. Vehicular circulation is conducted via a network of private alleys. Those alleys are 25 feet wide with a minimum of 20 foot pavement, provided efficient circulation for cars and delivery vehicles. The applicant will also provide a loading management plan for the two loading bays provided with this application. In regards to parking, parking is provided in an underground parking garage with 269 spaces, which include car share, EV, and ADA spaces. There are a total of 103 bicycle parking spaces provided as well.

Yeah, so that's it. Transportation. As far as environment and forest conservation, the site is subject to the 35% green cover requirement for the entire property, including phase one and phase two. As for phase one itself, the applicant has maximized a green cover on site. However, because of that area for phase one also includes the private alleys, which adds to the area for the green cover requirement, but they are not able to plant on that additional area. They're reaching about 32.5%. They will make up for that in phase two to reach an overall 35% green cover area. The applicant has also provided canopy trees on the public sidewalk here along Wisconsin and East-West Highway. Along East-West, there's a double row of trees where they could add those in just to increase the overall green cover. There's no forest on-site, so the overall forest conservation requirements are being met off-site, and the project has achieved stormwater management on-site via the use of biotension planters and, of course, the green roof. So provided a number of renderings just showing off the great property that they propose here. Starting off, we have a street view from Wisconsin Avenue looking both north and south, so you can see both sides of the building from Wisconsin. Here we can see the east-west highway streetscape. We're looking southwest here. We can see the seating area, the double row of trees, the green roof above. And this on the corner here is the private alley where we have green planting instead of entrance from east-west highway here. On the Wisconsin Avenue frontage to the north, we're walking along the retail on the first floor. Just in the distance here, you can see the corner, which will be the access for the metro. This is, again, looking at Wisconsin Avenue streetscape. Just from looking at the east side, you can see the overall building and the retail ground level and the residential above. This is again a better look at that integrated metro entrance which is much more visible and accessible than the integrated existing entrance today. We have a few corrections and updates to conditions of approval. The first one you see here is a condition of approval update for the admin subplan, which is a new condition of approval number six. At the time of posting of the staff report, we didn't have the completed SHA agency letter and comments in hand, so we're adding a condition to reflect that, which was received on July 17th as we stayed in contact with the agency as they reviewed the plans. Here we see some updates to the admin sub conditions of approval 12D and 13, which reflect coordination between the applicant and our transportation staff, just to reflect the latest and accurate dimensions shown on the plan for the streetscape and frontage improvements. Everything proposed on the plan still remain. We're just getting a more accurate look at the transitions as it happens and the dimensions from minimum to maximum. Updates for the expedited approval plan, condition number one, the figure here is being updated to reflect the proposed density, previously reflected the density to remain for commercial. This is more accurate because they're proposing the $11,500, not the $168,000, which includes the existing. And we're updating condition number 60 just to reflect that along East-West Highway, they're meeting the requirement for 70%. set back on the frontage, and that's also been incorporated into their public benefit points. We're just reflecting the condition to be more accurate to that respect. And finally, the applicant has met all noticing and signing requirements. We didn't receive any public correspondence with this plan, and we found that they meet the regulations for subdivision, zoning ordinance, as well as the master plan. So we recommend approval with conditions of all three plans here with the corrections as modified herein. Thank you.

For your presentation, would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Yep, my name is Nick Gordon here on behalf of the applicant MRP Realty.

Could you be a little bit closer to you? Can you hear me now? Yes. Sorry.

So my name is Nick Gordon. I'm here on behalf of the applicant MRP Realty and Prime Finance. First off, I just want to thank staff, Saquon, Leah, Stephanie, their whole teams. Getting this done via the expedited approval really was a tremendous lift, and we got it here before recess, and thank you, everybody, for all your work. I mean, I'll keep it short. We're in agreement with all of the conditions, so we really just look forward to answering any of your questions and, you know, moving this forward.

Any comments or questions from the board?

I wonder if I should note for the record that I used to work in that building about a decade ago.

So I'm actually really – I'm curious to see how it goes. That fact will in no way affect the objectivity of his decision.

Thank you. Which building? 7475. That was my office. I worked for Econometrica that was in there for a long time, so. For at least several years. Now it's popped up when I was reading it last night. I thought that was interesting. But the real question I had is this, you know, we've done some work to try to make more commercial to residential happen. And, you know, we've put in new, you know, plan options. And we've put in, the county council's put in some support for that. What was it about the property that allowed for that conversion? And what was it that appealed for that particular property?

I think there's a few parts to that. One is we qualified because of the current occupancy. We acquired the Ford property portfolio via distress purchase and purchased the note. So we viewed the highest and best use of this property as residential versus office, just given some of the challenges and the headwinds with trying to lease large blocks of office space. Just from a pure financial feasibility, this was what we viewed as the highest and best use. That's kind of first and foremost. Second is the location. I mean, you're main in Maine, and the visibility and kind of the performance of some of our competitors, it makes it really attractive. Lastly, you have... Again, you have the two buildings that, and I can let the architect speak on the floor plate, but it allowed for an efficient floor plate, and you were able to utilize the existing garage to help save on some additional costs. So really a combination of all of the things, but I think the biggest is just the challenges of trying to keep the building in its current use. It didn't make sense. It did not make sense for that. I was curious about the floor plate and how that was developed. And that's why 4650 got brought into it, to make it a little bit more efficient. And that's fully vacant. But yeah, it's really just leasing office space is really challenging and expensive.

And just curious, how many floors and they are all rental? And have you decided how many bedroom, one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedrooms?

So it's 302 feet on the Wisconsin corner and 187 feet on the east-west side. Yeah, we're at 29 floors. And the unit mix, we're still refining. I think that's part of this next step to finalize it. But it's really kind of based off market feedback. We had a market survey done. We evaluated our competition to see what they have and what's working, and it's trying to really put together a plan that's going to meet the market.

So it's rental?

All multifamily rental. Yeah, correct.

And for the phase two, is it going to be something similar in height or –

That's the idea, but we have a lot of work left to do on that.

Yeah, but right now, that's what you're hoping to achieve.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

A couple questions. Yeah, it looks like a great project. Thank you. How do you use – I like how you opened up the – have an open entrance to the metro there versus – which is – which is great. You don't have to go into a building, and it's right there. Using the existing parking garage, how do you do that? Is this sitting over the old parking garage? And if so, where are the foundations for the building? How is that all going to work? Please, go ahead.

Yeah, well, first off, in terms of the new entrance, I think I meant to give thanks to the DAP as well. They were a huge part of that. That was one of the primary discussion points from the DAP was how to make this corner kind of be what it wants to be. And I think we're really happy with how it came out. And then I'll let Chris talk about the rest.

Yeah, in terms of the existing underground garage, because of how the four parcels are located, the actual underground garage at 7475 is kind of like a key shape, a P shape. So it's under the building at the corner, and then it comes into the alley going down towards Montgomery. But it doesn't exist under 4650 Wisconsin. So it's a very odd shape. And because of that and because of how we're phasing the project, we're using the frontage on East-West Highway, it didn't make sense to actually utilize the existing garage for two reasons. I mean, what we're doing is we're utilizing the existing foundation walls to act as sheeting and shoring for our future garage. And so it's basically... giving us a pre-dug hole, which saves a lot of cost and energy. So not only because the footprint doesn't really work for us, but also the existing structure doesn't support going up this high. So the current building is only about 10 stories. If we were to reuse the structure and the columns in the existing garage, we'd only be able to build about 13 to 14 stories. So we're actually building 29, so an additional 16 stories. So that's the second reason why we kind of have to, you know, rebuild everything. So the advantage of the existing garage is the fact that it is giving us a pre-made whole or expanding upon that.

Okay, so I misunderstood. I thought you were using the existing garage as a garage. You're just using the whole of the... Yeah, exactly.

We're using the foundation walls and the whole that is in the existing garage.

Okay. I'd like... how that the parking ratio is, well, I don't know, something like 0.6. I forget what it counts. It's not a very high parking ratio, which is great. We like less parking instead of a metro and things like that. A question about the open space. So it's public open space. So in this project, it looks like just the plazas, that's the public. open space, it's not a park, it's not a whatever, it's the plaza and the seating for the, even counting the seating area for like a cafe, that's counted as public open space too in this project? I'm just trying to understand what is public open space in this project?

Right, and that's typical of our downtown projects. We have the space in front of the building as part of the public open space.

OK, OK, great, great. And then given this is a commercial to residential reconstruction, typically in some of our, so this project does not need a site, it's no site plan, correct? Everything is here. OK, so normally in some of these, we see more of the floor, the unit mix is defined, the other things are defined. It's just we're not seeing that in this. Or maybe I misunderstood. When we talked to Commissioner Petterm, say, what's the unit mix? And you said you haven't defined it yet.

I apologize. We have a, I mean, we're very close, I would say. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I would say generally at this stage, we have a fairly refined unit mix. And that's kind of how we decided that, hey, we need 420 units to be entitled. And within that mix, I think we're at about 35% two bedrooms, 45 ones. We have some studios and a couple three bedrooms. That will, over the next couple of years, as we refine and go through permit and certified site plan, those numbers may shift a little bit as the projects further develop. So we're not going to go. most likely, from 400 units to 200 units. But the mix within those percentages may shift slightly. So within the CRR submission, on the plans, we are showing the proposed units and the MPDUs related to them on the plans.

OK, great. I'd say within 2% to 3%.

OK. Last, great project. Hope you can move forward quickly. Do you have just a general time frame of how you plan to move forward on this project?

Yeah, we are, I mean, a condition of us moving forward is obviously how today goes, but the goal is to, you know, continue on with full schematic design on August 1. So, continue on with the process and then... eventually come back for trying to demo the building and go from there. We're moving. Our partner is on board with us moving this forward, which is fantastic. It's hard to do right now, these kind of ground-up developments, and having them alongside us gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to get this thing built and do it fast and efficiently.

Okay, great, great. Wonderful. Also, this is for staff. I saw in the the applicant has to have this community meeting. And you have the notes of the community meeting. It always talks about the, maybe I missed it, it talked about from the applicant's point, who's there from the applicant and his team. But I didn't see, there's generally no mention of how many people showed up. And so I just wonder, is that supposed to be in these, Or, you know, like I saw another one we're going to see today, too. Like, it doesn't say, like, 13, 14. But maybe I missed it. But maybe if it's in that.

We had a sign-in list. Matt Gordon, I think he's on virtually. But we had a sign-in list that Seltzer Griffish has that shows our list. So I'm sure that can be shared with you.

No, just out of curiosity. Five people, yeah. Lovely project. Look forward to you moving forward with any other questions or comments.

I have a comment. I think it's an outstanding project, and it's going to be really a beacon for the entrance into Bethesda from East-West Highway. And the project looks outstanding and very attractive. I do have a general curiosity question. With regards to the tower and the setback, and the condition with regards to the tower and setback. Why a six-foot setback for the tower? And I'm just trying to comprehend. It's part of the condition, but there was no explanation given for the six-foot setback for the tower. And if there wasn't a six-foot setback, did it materially change their plans and or change the amount of units that they could deliver?

So the six-foot site back comes from our implementation guidelines, which help them achieve their maximum density. So that's formed by coordination with staff, and that's to adapt to achieve the look they're looking for in urban design, downtown building, getting a base middle and top. So it comes from that. We're just speaking specifically to that requirement as it applies to this project. and getting a setback on those furnishes as required. As for how it affected the project, I'll let the applicant speak to that.

Well, I think in terms of the requirement or recommendation, it also gives us a couple points for our public benefit points. Not necessarily if we didn't comply with it, we just wouldn't get those points. But throughout the whole design process, there's the downtown guidelines, but there's the DAP. and all the recommendations on how to create a tapered building that feels great at the pedestrian level, but also seen elegantly from afar. And through use of setbacks, there's always a negotiation on how each site works with In the guidelines, every street has a recommendation for the depth of the setbacks and what level they occur. But our site and other sites that we've worked on, the floor plate kind of helps dictate that and what's efficient and how do you plan units. So our block here, especially at the corner where the tower is, is very square and rectangular. It's not actually very big. It has a very limited footprint, and so instead of doing straightforward wedding cake setbacks, you can see we have these tapering setbacks. One, to kind of give this elegant, tall verticality to the building, but also it allows us to actually get units in an efficient manner working with the core going all the way up to that. So within that, we kind of negotiate and work with the DAF and work with our numbers to see Our setbacks go from 0 to 15 feet on Wisconsin, but it's just not 70% of the facade because that frontage is only 100 feet. So it's just kind of a factor of how it works out.

Thanks. No other comments or questions? Do I have a... Should we make four motions or three? Okay, so the... These, the admin subdivision, commercial residential, and then the forest conservation, then the fourth would be the adopter resolution.

You can do the resolution with each one.

Okay, great, great.

So I have a moment. Mr. Chair, I just wanted to point out the hearing is still being live streamed. Granicus is still up and functioning, but apparently we are having teams issues. which means that if Mr. Gordon was connected via Teams, he was probably not able to say anything after you invoked his name. As another lawyer named Matt, I feel compelled to look out for him and point out to you that I'm sure he was trying, but we had a Teams issue.

I was going to ask that question, because on the agenda we have Matt Gordon. And I think you introduced yourself as Nick Gordon?

He's a cousin. He's my cousin.

Oh, OK. Because I thought it was a typo. And then rather than embarrass everybody and say there was a typo, I just let it pass. So you're Nick Gordon and Matt Gordon is not here. Yeah. OK. Thanks.

Now that we've sorted all that out, please proceed as you will.

All right. Do I have a motion to approve the administrative subdivision plan and the corresponding resolution where staff is recommending approvable conditions?

Move to approve the administrative subdivision plan with conditions and the resolution as well.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it 5-0. Do I have a motion to approve the commercial to residential reconstruction plan and the associated resolution where staff is recommending approval with conditions.

Yeah, I'll move to approve the commercial residential reconstruction plan with conditions and the corresponding resolution. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. And lastly, do a motion to approve the forest conservation plan and the accompanying resolution where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Yeah, move to approve the forest conservation plan with conditions as well as the corresponding resolution. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you. Good luck with your project. We'll take a two-minute break and start with our next item, Washington Episcopal Day School Preliminary Plan Amendment and Site Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. We're on item number seven, Washington Episcopal Day School Preliminary Plan Amendment and Site Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning we have Mr. Njeze presenting this item. Welcome.

Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Mr. Njeze with the West County Planning Division. Presenting preliminary plan amendment number 1201506B, site plan number 820260080, and forest conservation plan number F20260430, Washington Fiscal Day School. This application is located in Bethesda in the 2016 West Bard Sector Plan area. The site is highlighted there. It is currently CRT, but will be reviewed under the PD28 zone requirement. It is right in between the Little Falls Parkway and the Capitol Crescent Trail. The acres, as I stated earlier, is currently zoned CRT, but is being reviewed by a prior zone and granted an LMA G873, which is PD28. It is approved with the Washington Episcopal Day School, the subject of this application, and is accessed from Little Falls Parkway and also River Road via Landy Lane. Previously, approvals were the 2008 local map amendment I earlier stated. The amendment rezoned the application to PD 28 and established binding elements to construct 121 age-restricted dwelling units and up to 175,000 square feet of private educational institutional use, which includes expansion of the current school building. In 2016, a preliminary plan and a site plan were approved. to subdivide the property, one lot for the current school and another lot for the age-restricted multifamily units. To reinstate an expired planning plan validity period, extend the APF findings with a waiver for Section 54.3J.7.D. an expansion of the eastern portion of the school building, 1,600 square feet, and a forest conservation plan for a variance to remove two trees and meet provisions for mineral retention, reforestation, and afforestation. With this application, this school building expansion is going to be 1,600 square feet for a dining area and also serving as a multi-purpose room and an area for internal operations. It's going to be 26 feet in length, 53 feet in width. burial site, the Wilbur Family Cemetery, is located in the parking lot of this application. The applicant met the guidelines for burial sites with this. They did an archaeological study on this site. They are required to have a development plan that they will work with staff on. Staff finds that having a parking lot on top of a cemetery is unsatisfactory. So later on in the process, after this application approval, The applicant will work to find the exact location of the potential graves, shallow architectural excavations, and try and convert the area to green cover. And they, once again, will work with staff, HP staff, to figure out what that will look like. A preliminary plan validity period extension and an APF validity extension. This slide is just to show that, to distinguish that a preliminary plan is for a preliminary validity period lasts up until recordation of the plot, and the APF goes on for the analysis up until building permit from planning. This application for a preliminary plan found that This application went through certain uncertainties with the real estate market, especially with the original approval for the age-restricted housing increase in interest rates, construction costs. Finding someone to come in and then do development made economic feasibility shaky. And we found that staff finds that that is an exact finding for why this needs to be, why it lasts and why it needs to be extended. The application for the APF finds that it does not alter any of the previous findings, including the previous LMA and staff, and the applicant submitted this application before the expiration of it, keeping it alive. Required for non-residential and mixed-use subdivisions, Section 54.3J7DI, as stated in reports, that this is a single-phase development. The addition, at least, is going to be done in one phase all at once. SAG plan is in compliance with PD 28 zoning from the prior approval and from the LMA and it complies with the current standards as well as the green cover requirements. A man needing a variance removed two trees, and that is going to be mitigated with installation of 10 3-inch caliper trees. And the applicant met all special provisions for minimum retention, reforestation, and deforestation with this. And not allowing the variance would create an unwarranted hardship for the application. Requirements, signposting, notice of application and mailing. Notice of publication was mailed by staff and staff has received community correspondence. We received a letter from the Little Falls Watershed Alliance. They're concerned of the removal of the two trees and removal of invasive species along the Falls Parkway, but staff finds with the Forest Conservation Plan these concerns were addressed. and that the vines and trees along the Parkway are potentially outside of the application area. Staff recommends approval of preliminary plan amendment number 12015016B, site plan number A20260080, and final force conservation plan number F20260430, with conditions to extend the validity period of preliminary plan three years, extend the adequate public facilities six years, and waive a section of 543J7DI and build a 1,600 square foot addition to the existing school building. I'm here for questions as well as the applicant's attorney. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning. Pat Harris with Lurch, Rowley, and Brewer on behalf of the applicant, the Washington Episcopal School. With me is Wendy Tazen, who's the CFO, and Pat LaVey and Kyle Hughes from Crease, Hendricks, and Glasscock. We want to thank staff for that very thorough presentation this is a lot of process for a very little addition relatively speaking it will allow the school to have primarily the major driver was to have a dining a cafeteria for the students which they don't currently have so we have we really don't have a presentation the only request that we would have because the school is on a tight timetable because as you know schools try to do most of the construction when the children aren't in school, is if the resolution for this case could be approved by the last session before the break, so by next Thursday. That would be great, very helpful to us. And with that, we'd answer any questions you may have.

Yes, I'm in support of this request to these extensions. I do have a question. Maybe I had asked it before. Who's responsible for making sure that, are there ticklers out there for when these periods expire? Was this one where the, is this the? This wasn't the reinstatement. This wasn't, no, okay, I'm sorry, it's another one later. We'll talk about are there ticklers for when...

The answer to that, though, is no, that the tickler should, is on, the burden's on this side of the table to remember those dates.

Right, okay. And the historic team, yes, I... I'm glad you flagged about the burial ground and that we should not have sidewalks over the burial grounds and that they removed them, worked with the applicant to get those identified and removed and make them exposed to honor those folks that may be buried there. So all good. Thank you for that. I have no other comments or questions. Seeing no other, we'll make two motions. One is for the approval of the preliminary plan with conditions, approval of preliminary plan with conditions.

Can we commit for the resolutions next week?

That's up to the, I think, I'm sure we will do our best.

Yes. Yes. I previously told Ms. Harris that we would absolutely do our best to get them approved next week. So today you're just approving the applications, and then next week will be the resolutions. OK, great. Thank you. All right.

And then I'll move to approve the preliminary plan amendment with conditions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0 is a motion to approve the site plan. where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Move to approve the site plan with conditions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you. Mr. Chair.

All right.

I'm sorry. It's not on the cheat sheet. Yeah. So, yeah.

But it is on the agenda.

It is on the agenda.

It's on the agenda. OK. Do I have a motion? This is what counts. Motion to approve the final forest conservation plan. The staff is recommending approval with conditions. I'll move to approve the final forest conservation plan.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Thank you so much. Look forward to the school moving forward with this cafeteria. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break here. And we will start with item number eight, Old Angler's Cove Preliminary Plan Amendment. We will just stay in our seats while we get ready for the next one. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number 8, Old Anglers Cove Preliminary Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval with conditions, and we have Mr. Njeze presenting this item. Thank you.

Good afternoon. For record, Ogunda Njeze with the West County Planning Division presenting Preliminary Plan Amendment number 12017029B, Old Anglers Cove. It's located in the 2002 Potomac sub-region master plan area, as seen on the star on the screen. The site is directly north of the C&O Canal, makes up about three parcels for 1.87 acres. It is zoned R200 and is along MacArthur Boulevard. This site included 2019 preliminary plan approval, the original, for three lots for three single-family detached homes. In 2024, the original preliminary plan validity period was extended an additional 12 months, and the APA remained up until now. Reinstate the expired preliminary plan validity period to August 26, 2027. Extend the adequate public facilities findings to February 21, 2028. And a waiver for Section 54.3J7C. Clarify again, the preliminary plan validity period is up until platting. Adequate public facilities goes until the billing permits from the planning department. Billing permit from the planning department. applicant has experienced a significant unusual and unanticipated events after the previous approval leading to the need for an extension now and potential approval for this extension. Staff found that this application does not alter any of the previous findings or requirements from the previous approval and the applicant submitted this application before the plan expired in February. And the request for section 54.3 is warranted as detailed in the staff report that the applicant did experience unusual circumstances with the original project engineering experiencing personal hardship leading to a new replacement engineering firm who was unfamiliar with the process at Montgomery planning. having processing issues with getting planning done prior to expiration. Plans are in right now with Montgomery County Planning, and the applicant is working with staff to get that through. The applicant has met all noticing requirements, signposting, notice of application and mailing. Notice of publication was mailed by staff. Until this presentation, staff did not receive community correspondence until a late submission that came in yesterday, if I remember correctly. But after detailing it, I believe, open for questioning, but I believe that this application has met those concerns. Staff recommends approval of preliminary plan amendment number 12017029B with conditions to extend the validity period of the preliminary plan to August 26, 2027, extend the adequate public facilities six years to February 21, 2028, and waive section 5043J7DC. That you may have, and the applicant's attorney is also here. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning, Chair Harris and members of the Planning Board. For the record, Vince Biazzi with the law firm of Lurch Early and Brewer. Here today on behalf of the applicant, Benjamin J. Weisler. We are requesting approval of this preliminary plan amendment number 12017029B for Old Anglers Cove. We'd like to thank staff and Mr. Njeze for his thorough review and coordination throughout this request. As he mentioned, the planning board previously approved this subdivision of the property into three lots for three single-family detached homes in 2019. This amendment does not change that approval. It does not change the number of lots or any of the impacts associated with the original approval. But since the time of that approval, the applicant has experienced hardship and unusual circumstances related to the project's engineering team. These included delays related to COVID, a personal loss and hardship on behalf of the project engineer, and some financial issues that resulted in the folding of that firm. The applicant has since retained a new engineering firm. who has been trying to work through the platting process and has submitted the final plat for review by Park and Planning and county agencies. And we are currently in that process of platting. But this request really stems from the expiration of the plan validity period and now the APF. But again, we'd like to thank staff for their review. We agree with their findings and conclusions and would respectfully request that the planning board approve preliminary plan amendment 12017029B.

Thank you so much. I have no questions and comments. Any questions or comments from the other board members?

I have a comment. I'm appreciative of the staff and our rules that allow us to take in consideration personal hardships and loss. Life happens, and when it happens, government agencies should be flexible enough to take those things into consideration, and I'm thankful that we have that process. Thanks.

Great comment, Commissioner Bartley. Seeing no other questions or comments, do I have a motion to approve the Old Anglers Preliminary Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval with conditions? I'll move to approve the Old Anglers Curve Preliminary Plan Amendment.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. Thank you so much. And we will take a one-minute break and do our last item before lunch, which is item number nine water and sewer category change requests administrative desert delegation 2026 dash three group where staff is recommending transmit comments to the county executive. Thank you. Morning, we're on item number eight old and no, no, I'm sorry, I'm number nine water and sewer category change requests administrative delegation 2026 dash three group, where staff is recommending transmit comments to the county executive. And this morning, we have Mark, some Bauer, some Borski presenting the site and welcome.

For the record, Mark Zaborski, environmental planner with the Environment and Climate Division. Today, I will be presenting the third quarter 2026 water and sewer amendments. Before you today is one administrative water and sewer category change request. These change requests are initiated by property owners by applying to the Department of Environmental Protection, the lead agency for the county's water and sewer plan. DEP evaluates the application in detail with analysis and comments from the Department of Permitting Services, Well and Septic Division, WSSC, the Planning Department, and the Department of Parks. These cases are generally within an administrative group because they fit well within master plan guidance and the policies of the county water and sewer plan. More problematic or controversial cases go to the county council for decision. This request will be determined by the county executive. DEP held their public hearing on July 22. DEP will make their final decision after the planning board's recommendations are received. State law requires that the planning department make recommendations for these requests based on whether the application conforms to the sewer and water service recommendations of the county comprehensive plan. The state wishes to avoid the extension of this type of infrastructure to low density areas that have not been planned and zoned for service. Such a large and diverse county, it is not feasible or sustainable to provide service everywhere. Generally, it is the master plan that determines the areas that can receive service. The planning board is required to make a master plan conformance determination for all water and sewer category change requests. And that is the item before you today. It is a matter of determining master plan conformance, not technical feasibility for the extension, merits of any subsequent development, or potential impacts of that development. Those issues may come before you later if a development plan comes forward for the property. Here's an example of a planned sewer service envelope from the Olney master plan, showing which areas are planned to receive sewer service. The request today is for 24510 Ridge Road in Damascus. The applicant requests for the 6.52 acre property a change from Water Category 6, Sewer Category 6 to Water Category 1 and Sewer Category 3 to support a proposed single-family detached housing development on public water and sewer. The applicable master plan is the 2006 Damascus Master Plan. The figure here shows the water and sewer map for the property and the water mains abutting. The property is in the master plan area designated for existing and proposed community sewer and water and abuts both existing public water and sewer lines. The proposed water category change is consistent with the master plan and the sewer category change. And the MCDEP recommendation is to approve the category change to W1S3, and that is also the staff's recommendation. would be to transmit the planning board's recommendations to the county executive. Staff presentation, we ask that the planning board transmit their comments on this case to the county executive who will make the final decision. Montgomery County DEP is present to answer any questions. And I believe Mr. Benedetti is on the line. who has testimony for this property concerning technical issues regarding the extension and the proposed development.

Great. Yes, I see Mr. Frank Benadetti. Please, you have three minutes for your public testimony. Welcome.

Bless you.

Mr. Beninati, can you take yourself off mute? And we're all ears to hear your testimony. Looks like you're off mute. Can you hear us? Can you leave the call and rejoin, please?

Am I rejoined?

Yep.

Okay. Did I get through?

Yeah, you're... Live and clear, sir. OK. Yeah, you have three minutes. Yeah, please state your name and present your testimony. Thank you.

OK, my name is Frank ,, my wife and I, Meryl, live at 24601 Marlborough Drive. We are an adjacent property owner to the development. We have a couple of concerns. with the early stages of the development of the plan, primarily dealing with the Kings Valley lift station and the force main that travels from that station up to the top of Ridge Road. It passes across the front of our property and makes a couple of 90-degree turns. And the pipe has failed twice in the past. And we're concerned that any additional load in the system might have an impact on that line. Also, the construction or possible extension of Marlborough Drive would be on top, would put substantial fill dirt on top of that force main, further stressing the pipe and system. So we're concerned about how the development affects the sewage line that sewers our entire region and is critical infrastructure from our standpoint. So we need to be sure that's adequate and protected. The second issue is our water supply. If they decide to try to connect to our water in Marlboro Drive instead of Ridge Road, Our system is under design review by WSSC for replacement, and we want to be sure that WSSC would add in any impact extending it to these additional homes might have on the branch line that would feed the homes along Marlboro Drive. That's primarily our concerns at this time.

Thank you, sir, for your presentation. Maybe we could have Mr. Sukup and Mr. Williamson talk about his concerns, and would they or not be addressed as this move forward?

Good morning. For the record, Alan Sukup with the Department of Environmental Protection. The sewerage system in this area and the pumping station, which is actually the Spring Garden pumping station, is CCC's capital program for replacement. They're moving the pump station from south of the intersection at Kings Valley and Kingstead Road, and gonna put it on the northeast corner of that intersection. The pump station, excuse me, The pump station capacity will be expanded because there's more area that's going to feed into that pump station. And we will discuss with WSSC the problems that the property owners on Marlboro Drive have been having with the force main. They've indicated it's failed twice. And if we're going to be pumping more flow through that main, it sounds like WSSC needs to pay attention to that. know from our standpoint right now whether the applicant's proposal to send Marlboro Drive through this site and down to Ridge Road, whether that's going to be a part of the subdivision or not. Water could be extended from Ridge Road, and there are other locations around the property where sewer lines could be extended. They would need easements, but they could be extended. So these are issues that really will come to the fore in the preliminary plan process, and we will comment on those when we get the preliminary plan.

From The applicant. OK, great.

Yep, that's it.

OK, thank you so much.

Are there any questions from the board? Just one question for me. Is the finding that it's in conformance with the master plan because it's within the sewer envelope that you described? Or what's the basis for that finding, that it's in conformance?

the planned water and sewer envelope. It also, the property abuts existing water and sewer lines. OK. OK. Thanks. That was my only question.

No comments? No. So do I have a, well, Mr. Beninati, it seems like this is going to be looked at at the time of the preliminary plan. So I really appreciate you. making your presentation. So is there a motion to approve the water and sewer category change requests and present the comments to the county executive?

I'll move to approve the recommended approval of the water and sewer change requests and transmit comments to the county executive.

Second. Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye. The ayes have it 5-0. So the board's going to go into closed session and then take lunch and come back at 1-15. So with respect to the closed session, in accordance with the Maryland Annotated Code Journal Provisions Article 3-305B7 to consult with counsel to obtain legal advice. The topic of discussion is forest conservation law. Thank you.

We'll see you back at... We need a motion, please.

Oh, I'm sorry. I was too fast. Do I have a motion to go into closed session? Move for closed session. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you so much. We'll be back at 1.15. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. We're on item number 11. No, on item number 10, I'm sorry. Montgomery County Curbside Management Guide, where staff is recommending that they review the report with the board. So this afternoon we have Richard Brock, oh, where's, oh, there he is, Richard Brockmeyer, the Planning Department reviewing this item with us. Thank you so much and welcome.

So this is David Anspacher, Chief of the Transportation Planning Division. I'm going to just kick this off real quick. We're pleased to be here today to introduce the county's new curbside management plan. It's a collaboration between the Montgomery County Department of Transportation and the Planning Department. This work has been several years in the making, and so the team, we're all very excited Excited to be here sharing it with you today. The plan represents an important and innovative step for the county. Only a small number of jurisdictions in the county are actually even attempting to develop a comprehensive curbside management framework such as this. So this is very innovative. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Richard Brockmeyer to introduce the project team and begin the presentation.

Thanks, Dave. Again, for the record, Richard Brockmeyer, Transportation Planning Supervisor with the Transportation Division. We're very excited to bring this policy guide to you and provide an overview. As Dave mentioned, it's a collaborative. It's been a collaborative process with MCDOT. They've been the lead agency, but we've been partnering on this. And today I'm joined by Andrew Bossie with MCDOT and with our consultant project manager, Robert Ferrin from Kimley Horn. And just want to note, again, this is just a briefing. There's no action that you need to take after this. But we will have time for questions and answers. So just to go over what we'll cover today, we're going to give you an overview of the project, go into a bit of the literature review that was done as part of this project. We're going to talk about curb use prioritization, the curb typologies, and different curb uses, and then save time for questions and answers. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Robert.

Members of the Planning Commission, my name is Robert Farren with Kimley Horne. I help lead our national curbside management and parking practice, and I'm excited to share some high-level overview of the Montgomery County Curbside Management Policy Guide. We're here today because the curb has changed dramatically. The demands on the curb have changed. This goes back pre-pandemic, but certainly post-pandemic as an accelerator. consumers have changed the way they receive goods, right? The amount of Amazon boxes we all receive, Uber Eats, DoorDash, freight pick up and drop off, passenger pick up and drop off with ride share, micro mobility, the list goes on and on. There's a lot more competing interests for a curbside that never typically gets larger and usually shrinks based on safety and or other type of transportation improvements. And so with the combination of increased demands, changing customer preferences, and really looking at the curbside in a different way, the time is certainly great to be looking at how do we provide some policy guidance to practitioners as well as private, certainly, developers. There's a recognition that vehicular storage may not be the highest and best use for the curb. And we are seeing more and more non-vehicular uses, thinking about on-street dining, green and open spaces, placemaking, things that want to be in that seven to eight feet of space between the sidewalk and the travel lane. And so we're really talking about more than just a parking space. We're talking about how the curb can perform at a higher level. And so this project really does aim to enable more uses of the curbside in a more dynamic and flexible manner. In particular, making sure that as we introduce new curb uses, we're thinking about how these uses comply with different regulatory requirements. In particular, federal guidelines around public right-of-way accessibility guidance, or PROAG. And so that was certainly a trigger among other triggers for this project. This policy guidance document helps to establish protocols for both public agency as well as private when we're thinking about maintaining and operating these spaces. And we'll go into a little more detail about some detailed design guidance for certain uses and how they interact, again, from both an accessibility standpoint but also their interaction with other mobility investments such as protected bike lanes and transit lanes. We started this project about a year ago, as was mentioned, a partnership between MCDOT as well as the planning team. And throughout the process, our team at Kimley Horn worked iteratively with both staffs to make sure that we were aligned with policy goals of the county. and aligned with other, you know, certainly initiatives. And so we started with our literature review, we'll talk about in a second, where we made sure that we were aligned with county policy, moved into our policy development, where we started to look at both the applicable curb uses and their application on different street typologies. Then moved into design development. We'll again go over some of those detailed designs here for two to three uses, and then arrived at our final documentation over the past few months. So I'll start with the literature review where we inventoried and made sure we are aligned with a number of your plans. There's a laundry list of plans we looked at, but I do want to call out a few, in particular, your complete street design guide. And we really do see this curb management policy guide as a companion document to your complete street design guide. We also looked at agency policies such as fire department access performance-based guide. That's pretty specific, but when we think about the curb and the right-of-way, we want to make sure that we're also thinking about safety and making sure that first responders have access. We also looked at such plans as your BRT guidelines, as well as your urban loading and delivery management study. We also looked at a number of peer jurisdictions. Curb management is a newer topic in the industry, but we know that quite a few jurisdictions are also moving the needle on innovative curb practices. We looked locally around certainly Arlington County and Fairfax County. as well as Arlington, Fairfax. And then we also look broadly at places like New York, Washington, DC, again, locally, and then Seattle, Washington. All three of those cities have had some innovative curb management practices in the application of pilot programs. in the curb. And finally, some industry best practices, whether it's through NACTO or ITE, FHWA, IPMI, again making sure that we are incorporating those kind of best practices into the policy guidance for the county. Some key themes that arrived out of certainly all this review, making sure first and foremost our curbs are accessible and safe to all user groups. We're being efficient with limited curb space. We're thinking about how curb management can reinforce sustainability goals that we know with curb management, a lot of different departments and divisions are operating in this space. Again, reflected in the coordination between DOT and planning here. Then we want to bring data to the table. Parking management, curb management has generally historically been driven by anecdotes, conjectures, and the loudest person in the room who either wants a loading zone or on-street dining facility. How do we take a data-driven approach to how we prioritize that limited curb space and really provide that solid policy guidance to practitioners and the private industry about how we allocate this space? So I'm going to start with curb use prioritization. And so our first step was to define and then categorize the type of curb uses that we believe would be applicable under certain situations in the county. And so this was an inventory of all curb uses and then settling on these specific curb uses around access, placemaking, and activation and parking. Not to say there are not other curb uses that could have a special application in certain circumstances, but in general, wanted to provide policy guidance on prioritization of the typical curb uses we would see on county streets. You can see that the highest priority is access, whether it's for pickup and drop-off, shared and micromobility parking and transit stops. Moving to a lower prioritization, placemaking and activation, we think about things like daylighting, which should always be considered to enhance site triangle compliance and make sure we are continuing to improve safety for motorists and vehicles and cyclists, or motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. What do you mean by daylighting? So daylighting is maintaining that site triangle. It could be anywhere from 15 to 20 feet from the crosswalk to where a type of curb use would start. And daylighting is really an opportunity for us to introduce some type of infrastructure that maintains compliance, meaning we are preventing someone from standing in that space, a vehicle, blocking the sight distance so that if I'm a pedestrian, I can't actually see oncoming traffic and vice versa.

So daylighting is essentially pedestrians, motorists, and bicyclists being able to see it so that they can remain safe.

At intersections and alleys.

Could you also explain micromobility parking? What is that?

I'm shared in micromobility parking. Further along in the presentation, I have a little more information on that curb use. I have a whole slide on that. That's fine.

I just didn't understand the meaning of micromobility. Okay.

Oh, perfect. So micromobility, we think about things like e-bikes, shared scooters, those types of devices. That could be a shared kind of bike share, or it could be someone's personal bicycle or scooter. And there's all kinds of other interesting things that people are riding around in the public riding way these days.

So it's different than bicycle parking?

That could be incorporated under micromobility, yes.

OK.

Yes, ma'am. From a placemaking and activation standpoint, we think about daylighting. We think about some of the nonvehicular uses of the curb that have really been introduced over the past several years, like parklets, so small green spaces which can act as community gathering places, additional green and open spaces, and things like streeteries and outdoor dining. And then on the lowest priority, but still very important in how we currently manage most of our curbs in the county and, quite frankly, nationally, are things around accessible parking, managed on-street parking, whether that be through paid parking or permit parking, motorcycle parking, specifically for permits, residential, RPP, on-street parking, and then, of course, unmanaged parking. That is just space that is available for vehicle storage on a first-come, first-served basis.

I do have a question about prioritization. When I think of priority of curbs, I think protection of pedestrians, bicyclists, and I would look at parking as being a high priority to protect bicyclists and pedestrians. And so is this priority based upon the Safe Streets Guidelines, or is this based upon some factor with regards to development. So when I think of curbs, I'm thinking safety, right? And so just based on my personal experience being a lawyer, parking and vehicles are the largest safety hazard to bicyclists and pedestrians. And so when I look at priority and safety, I would put parking high on the priority list of protecting people.

Let me do that. Just to be sure, you're thinking of where parking serves as a buffer between the main travel lanes and the sidewalks. So these are just focused on downtown and town center streets and boulevards. These are already our slowest speed streets where that kind of higher speed separation is not quite as relevant as if it was a 35 mile per hour plus road. So it's less about needing that buffer and more about just what, I guess, an efficiency of use and different competing needs for the space with that, by just by nature of being a lower speed of street, that buffer is not quite as critical. We still have a street buffer and this curb lane itself provides some buffer, but using cars to form that wall is not quite as critical for these.

So it's priority use of space as opposed to priority of safety.

I mean, there's always this priority of safety. It's just having to use cars to form that wall of separation is not, that's not the biggest need we have from a safety perspective for these speeds of streets.

Call out in this policy document is that the guidance in this document is pertaining to the leftover space, which I guess is a technical term we're going to use now. It's the space that is not needed for the safety aspects of our public right of way. For code regulated space, so many feet from a fire hydrant or an alley or an intersection, it is really that space that once we consider all those safety requirements and regulations, how are we prioritizing that leftover space to its highest and best use to serve adjacent land uses and serve kind of the broader demand for access to that space for businesses and residents and visitors?

So I think it's important you make that distinction because I have the same question that why safety is not there. But I understand what you're saying, but I don't know if the document is very clear about that.

Through our prioritization for uses by category, we then went into curb typologies. I'm going to get into curb and street typologies here in a minute, but this was an organizational factor for us. Taking a page out of your complete street design guide, consider a general prioritization of curb use. Does that prioritization change based on the type of street that we're looking at in the county? And so we selected four street typologies where we see where there's current curb space available. Curb space has been designed into these streets. So we looked at downtown boulevards and downtown streets, town center boulevard, and town center streets. And further along in the presentation, I'm going to show you a manifestation of how this would look in the real world and take it a little more out of the abstract. But I did want to pause here and identify, again, the higher priority uses for all of the curve typologies. may start with access, then go to placemaking and activation, and then parking. But I wanted to note some special curb uses that under certain circumstances, based on the transportation system, the presence or absence of off-street parking, as well as other demand generators, we may introduce these types of special curb uses, including taxi stands, long-term loading for freight, micro hubs, and car share. I'll also note on this list where we have incompatible uses, uses that we feel, based on the street typology, based on the nature of these streets and the adjacent land uses, would not make sense to prioritize. And so you can see that list as well, and that varies based on these different typologies. This is not to say that if it's a lower use, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a space at the curb. It just means that we are not going to prioritize it as much as, for, you know, certainly example, our access uses. and kind of show you a little bit of taking this prioritization out of the abstract and how it could apply to the different street typologies. How we allocate space based on typology. We've developed a curb allocation decision-making process. This policy guide is not a technical document. It provides the framework for which practitioners, being staff as well as private entities, can look at a general process for how we allocate space. But we know that all parking and curb management decisions are local. And so the expectation is this framework helps to incorporate the locality of how we allocate limited curb space. And so the first three elements of the decision-making process is really about data, and it's about listening to stakeholders. And it's about engaging with local businesses, owners, and residents to understand their needs for the curb space. This could take the form of understanding when loading and unloading activities happen for businesses, how restaurants are changing, how restaurants are certainly responding to changing demands from customers, and how new apartment buildings, for example, how their loading and unloading needs are being met. Then it's looking at data, whether it's parking occupancy data that's continually collected from the county, as well as citation issuance data to understand compliance factors. We know that going through this framework and allocating space to higher priority uses can help to maintain and encourage compliance. Absent that, we may have increased congestion and safety concerns, and that could lead to additional tickets being issued. So we want to look at that data to help to formulate our decision-making process. We also want to look at crash data, pedestrian demand, as well as micromobility data. These don't all have to be done all at the same time, but as data is available, we want to bring this data to the forefront to help inform our decision-making process. Once that data has been collected and analyzed, then we go through process four through seven that I'll go through for each of the typologies here in a minute. And it's really about getting to the question of several commissioners, how are we prioritizing that limited curb space? We're looking at things like the active ground floor uses and the surrounding land uses. What are those uses? And based on those types of uses, we're going to allocate space accordingly. What does our side street and alley adjacency look like? Are there opportunities to move, for instance, loading activities to a side street or an alley and prioritize the curb on the main street for other uses. If we have those pieces of infrastructure, great. If we don't, we need to build that into our consideration process. Especially for newer developments, do we have on-site loading we could be using or parking facilities for vehicle storage? In some areas of the county, we have that. We have county parking facilities. In other areas, we have private. We need to be thinking about the off-street presence or absence of parking as we factor in our decision-making for curb allocation. And of course, we need to look at how the curb is currently allocated. And for the most part, curbs are allocated to parking. But in some cases, we've already made strides. The county's been making strides on where do we put in paid parking, time limits, or loading zones. And so of course, we want to respond to the current condition before we start making changes. Downtown Boulevard. For each of these four slides, you have an existing allocation on the left-hand side and what would be a proposed allocation based on the framework that is developed in this guide. And so this is a downtown boulevard where we currently have the predominant uses of managed parking as well as a transit stop. And based on the adjacent land uses, side street, side street and alley adjacency, and our assumption of different data points around demand and compliance, we've reallocated space, as you can see on the right, to really emphasize those pickup and drop-off zones, or PUDO zones, toward the corners, introducing ADA parking to meet PROAG, you know, and also introducing placemaking and activation in the form of a parklet mid-block to respond to the fact that we do not necessarily have those uses off the street in the public right-of-way. And so you can see the allocation on the right responds to the land uses of this street and also provides guidance to not only how much space should be allocated, but the placement of space, meaning ADA should be closest to the crosswalk And PUDO zones should also be close to the corner to take advantage of existing pedestrian infrastructure. Downtown Street, this is an example where we have a, you know, certainly existing protected bike lane. So we want to take that certainly into consideration. We have managed parking. And then we have quite a bit of placemaking and activation with streeteries and kind of outdoor dining activities. And so with these existing curb uses and adjacent land uses available to us, that data, we looked at a proposed curb allocation change of again introducing things like pickup and drop-off that were absent on the street, as well as ADA parking at the corner, and in this case, adding in micromobility and adding in that parking below the curb off the sidewalk so we can prioritize pedestrian access above the curb and move the parking of bikes or scooters or other micromobility devices below the curb, knowing this is along a protected bike facility. concept the street the area we're looking at right here is currently all unmanaged parking we also have you know an area that is is more emerging with apartments on the left an area that you know certainly could see redevelopment on the right and again looking at the land use and the traffic generation we see an opportunity to go from unmanaged parking to to pick up and drop off zones near the corner. That corner would presumably have some type of land use that would require or need pick up and drop off, either goods or passenger. ADA spaces on street, again, to meet PROAG. And in this case, we are looking to introduce some managed parking adjacent to retail to encourage some turnover of spaces for that business. Lastly, on a town center street, you can see the existing management with transit stops along this corridor as well as unmanaged parking. Now, this is adjacent to an area that has quite a bit of off-street parking. That certainly goes into our thought process about how we allocate that limited curb space. In this case, we're introducing pick-up and drop-off zones to, again, accommodate passenger as well as goods pick-up and drop-off. And we're placing those, again, near the corners. Placemaking and activation has been installed mid-block in at least one location, again, to respond to the need for some type of greening or softening of the infrastructure in the area. And we've introduced ADA parking to, again, meet those ADA pro-wag requirements.

So the difference between managed parking and unmanaged parking, if it is a parking meter?

So unmanaged parking is first come, first serve. There are no restrictions. Managed parking can take different forms. Managed parking could be time-limited, and there's the use of that application around the county where you arrive at a space and it's just time-limited, but you don't have to pay for it. And then managed parking could include also charging for parking and having paid parking. It could also include some type of permit parking, whether it's for employees, businesses, or residents. Managed parking, in a sense, means that we are restricting it in a way that is creating turnover and creating more access to those limited spaces to access businesses.

Thank you.

We've noted the curb uses that we are looking to prioritize based on these different topic areas. And we've talked a little bit about how we would apply those under different typologies. I want to end with a little more detail on some of these curb uses, not all of them, but several of them. And within the policy document for all of these curb uses, we provided guidance on implementation. The types of implementation, the size of these zones, so the recommended length of each of the curb uses, as well as the placement of those zones, performance indicators, quantifiable metrics that measure successful outcomes of what we would see in a curb use. That could be turnover, it could be utilization, length of stay, or regulatory compliance. We want to make sure that we're assessing these key performance metrics after we've implemented these uses to determine if they need to be changed over time. We talk about session duration and optimal siting, and then location considerations. And these are the physical and programmatic attributes to consider when implementing each of these curb uses. We're going to go into a little more detail for just a handful of these to give you a little more context on what we mean by this implementation guidance. So we're gonna start with pick up and drop off. What you're gonna see on these slides on the left is our implementation guidance, and on the right, you're gonna see our detailed design guidance. We did not provide this for every use in the policy guide. We introduced detailed design guidance in areas where we were introducing either accessibility requirements through a PROAG, or we were looking at how do they interact with protected bike lanes or transit lanes, and how do we start to look at design when we have a floating curb lane, meaning the curb lane is not actually up against the curb. We're seeing that application more and more around the county and certainly nationally so that we can achieve some safety and operational benefits from floating that curb and protecting a bike lane or a transit lane.

Do you have also typical sections or different typical sections for different kind of curve? You know, the height, the width, the mountable curve or regular curve, or I don't know if there are other curves. Is there any information that what kind of curve and how they look like?

In these sections, but we do have that guidance in other purposes, especially our bike lane design, where we have these separated floating facilities, that's because there's a bike lane separating it from the main curb behind that. And we do have that guidance for bike lane design.

Okay, but in here, do you say which kind of curb you want them to use? Or no, we just say this is a curb? And leave it to them to decide what it would be.

It'd be up to designers to decide. At this point, I'm assuming it's probably just regular conventional curve. But it's something, this is all new. So it's something as we start building these things, we'll get a better sense of it.

And this is just a guideline, correct? Yep, that's correct. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Pettowing. I wrote that question down because I think the curb style is very important. And so I look forward to seeing the curb style and design in future presentations. Thanks.

through first two different types of pickup and drop-off zones for passengers. The first is adjacent, so immediately adjacent to the curb. And the second is how this would be designed in a floating situation with some type of bike facility in this specific example, how that would interact between that facility and then certainly this curb use. And so for pickup and drop-off, we're going to go over passenger, and then we're going to go over goods. The big difference here is when we think about passenger pickup and drop-off zones, we are introducing ProWag requirements into this detailed design. On the left-hand side, you can see that for pickup and drop-off zones, whether adjacent or floating, we are recommending looking at 40 feet in length, so approximately two parking spaces. We are typically managing these for session durations up to 15 minutes. And you can see this detailed design also provides direction on the sign type and dimensionality of the sign. And you can see we're expressing the time limit in a 15-minute loading zone. We are using graphics to show that this is prioritized for a passenger zone. And in this case, we are recommending there could be some kind of payment requirement to help to reinforce the fact we only want this to be used for 15 minutes. But that is certainly optional, as well as the photo enforcement can certainly be optional. Our key performance indicators are around turnover and block compliance. How many times is this space turning over? That's a good indication of access. And then compliance. If folks are staying longer than 15 minutes, they're parking there for longer periods of time, that is good information to know. Do we need to have more focused enforcement or do we need to look at different tools in the toolbox to maintain compliance? Our siting, as was mentioned before, this functions best at the end of the block. And then when we think about location considerations, Is there an adjacent ADA space or curb ramp or crosswalk? That's going to help to formulate certainly the design of this and then the land use activity. We would be putting these zones in based on the need for this type of curb use. We also have some community impact kind of order of magnitude metrics that we've included for each of the curb uses around livability. sustainability, economy, and revenue. These are rough order of magnitude to kind of, again, express, based on the use, how are they impacting broader county policies. The detailed design you see here, again, is adjacent to the curb, and you can see the introduction of an additional five feet that is needed for a clear zone between where the previous curb was and the new curb is. as well as a 50% free of obstruction zone beyond that above curb.

Could you show this? I'm a little bit confused to figure out what, because the eight foot is like a side path, correct? It's a bike path. And then where the car or whatever actually stops? I don't know. Is it where you have the... So that's the lane.

Can you see the cursor? Yes. Okay, just to make sure. Perfect. So this is a typical curb, eight feet. Here's the curb. And when we approach this loading zone, we're now creating an additional five-foot zone for a clear zone. And this is for the passenger loading zone. So this would be another curb use. It could be a regular parking space, managed or unmanaged. That would be probably the more typical use based on our prioritization. And then at this point, it would be signed with these signs being a 15-minute loading zone. And we introduce some striping and some flex posts to certainly reinforce this is a loading zone. And here's the adjacent travel lane right here.

So you're introducing actually eight foot to the width. to create this loading and unloading. I'm a little bit confused that I thought this, sorry, that ask you this question may not be a very wise question, but I ask. I thought that this document talks about the actual curb placement. Where are you going to put the curb? The curb is something that could be six inch or eight inch wide. But I see you're talking about an eight foot width that would be added to the curb line to allow for this uploading and unloading. They may not have eight foot of space. So what happens to the curb management?

I can take it. The policy document is intended to provide guidance on how to allocate the curb space as opposed to the physical curb itself. So we're really looking at the asphalt, although it could be concrete, I guess, the existing parking lanes. So imagine on Georgia Avenue where we just have cars parked along the curb. We're now talking about, does it still make sense to have all those cars parked there? Does it make sense to introduce something like the loading zone or an on-street dining facility? When we get to passenger loading zones in particular where we bring in Prowag, these recommendations include physically moving that curb because we have new requirements for instead of a parking space being eight feet wide to park a car, it actually has to be 13 feet wide to accommodate ADA requirements. But in both situations, the curb design itself would still be consistent. But the line would move. The curb line would move, but the curb itself would still be designed in a very similar way. I can note where we have some ramping, but in general, that face of curb would still remain the same.

So basically, this document is not only about the curb alone, it talks about the zone that is being curbed. Is that correct?

It's the use of that curb space, yes.

Okay.

And less focused on the curb itself as a design.

Yeah, because it was not clear. That was the first time. When I saw curb management, I had to struggle. What do you mean by curb management? So I was struggling to it. So I went ahead and started looking at your description of But based on that description, I thought you were talking about actually where you're going to locate the physical curve along the road. But now based on this that you have, you're talking also that not only is that, is the space associated with it. That changes the typical section of the roads, isn't it? Because you basically are talking about it.

Yes, in this case, to meet the ProWag component, you actually are shifting the curve.

Yeah, you're changing the typical section.

To be able to add that additional space that you need to be PROAC compliant. But in some other designs and some other uses, you don't have to physically move the curve. I understand.

But moving it physically changed the typical section of the road that we have associated with different typology. Now you are changing that. And I do not know that if it's going to be enough space to do that for people or if that's something that the development community even appreciate that because that is less space to do other things.

And I think part of what you saw on some of the other slides that were demonstrated of what existing conditions are and what they could be Where you place this pickup drop-off zone, which would require that five-foot shift, would only be in places where you can accommodate that. So that goes into the decision-making of where you locate this versus some of the other uses that you could locate along the curbside.

I understand that. If it's existing, you have that. But if it is proposed, we have to associate more width. for this to happen, that takes less amount for development area.

That extra width is coming from a section that we call the street buffer. That's already built in the complete streets. It's usually six feet for many of these streets, sometimes a little bit wider than other streets.

Okay, so that's part of the street buffer?

It would go into the street buffer. Actually, when we were working on these, we had a lot of discussion trying to shrink it to make sure it fit within that space and didn't intrude beyond that. So that space we should have. Obviously, older streets with limited right-of-way may still be constrained, but in complete streets, that street buffer is, I think, the highest priority across every single street type. So we should be having that space available.

Okay. So this is part of the buffer.

Right. Okay. I got it.

It was not clear to me.

And if we do not have that space available, obviously we will find another location to meet these ADA requirements to provide that.

But the typical section of the buffer different typology roads, it still stays the same, then, based on what's...

In terms of the right-of-way width, yes, it would stay the same. You'd put it within that buffer. But I do want to note this is sort of federal guidance on providing. You do have to provide a certain number of... If you're providing on-street parking, you do have to provide a certain number of accessible spaces.

Oh, I'm not talking about that. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

I just want to take one moment. I think we've used the term PROAG a few times. I'm not sure if all the commissioners are familiar with that term. PROAG is the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines. It's the new guidelines that came out in the past year or so from the federal government that govern accessibility accessibility. It's an update to the accessibility ADA standards that have been in effect for over 30 years. So one new thing that this image is showing is for these accessible parking spaces, this hatched out area, this five extra feet is required for accessible parking spaces. I think I got that.

Specifically, this is for accessibility in passenger loading zones. We have a slide that speaks specifically. ProWag is very clear on how to design an on-street ADA parking space. It is less clear and provides some high-level guidance on things like loading zones, and that's where this policy guide potentially the first in the country, but don't quote me on that, but I haven't seen really a lot of great guidance on loading zones. We co-developed with staff, how do we apply ProWag to a loading zone environment to create the accessibility and the loading component into one design? but we know that there are right-of-way constraints. In fact, it's a small note on this, but there is a note that you would have to have at least 60 feet or more of public right-of-way to actually accommodate this design.

Thank you. I got it now. Sorry. It was unclear. No need to apologize. How are you going to put all of these things in there?

Just to wrap up this design, we're using pavement markings, flex posts, as well as new signage to clearly communicate to drivers, to motorists, the intended use of this space, introducing the 50-foot free zone, and then creating a ramp opportunity here for someone to be able to get out of the vehicle and then get up to the sidewalk. Again, this is adjacent to an existing intersection and crosswalk. Again, this is guidance, and these are things that, as the county is looking at introducing this type of zone, either in a retrofit or a new design, would be using this type of guidance to help implement a passenger loading zone with ADA accessibility adjacent to the CARB. When we look at floating, we introduce some new concepts. So in this situation, we have a protected bike facility that is adjacent to the curb. And we are introducing the same type of loading zone. But in this case, our 50-foot free obstruction zone is actually in the bike facility itself. So someone could cross here. or can come over here and go to the sidewalk. We're still using concepts like pavement markings and flex posts with a similar signage, but we are introducing the 50-foot, 50% free zone actually within the bike facility. In this case, you can see the bike lane actually ramps up to be flush, or sorry, does not ramp up, is going to be adjacent here. And we are introducing markings so that the cyclists know, hey, someone could actually be crossing right here. Again, in this case, you need at least 73 feet of public right-of-way to incorporate this type of design. So we know that for retrofits, this might be a little more difficult. But if you're introducing a new street concept or if you are rebuilding a street, and you had a protected bike lane and wanted to have a ADA passenger loading zone, the type of design you would use to help implement that.

So here, could you show along that? Do you have one line of curbs, or do you have two line of curbs to separate? The loading zone is sandwiched between the road and the bikeway, okay? Is there any curve between the loading zone and bikeway? And where is that?

Between the loading zone and the bike lane? Yeah, where is the curve? Yes, the divider between the bike lane and the...

So there is a curve.

Yes.

Yes, that's curved right there where the cursor is right now. And then there would be another curve then between the bike lane and then the top where the sidewalk would be. But in that stretch where the cursor is right now, it would probably become flush with the sidewalk. If you're an ADA person, user coming into that space, this gives you two different options to be able to get from between your vehicle and the sidewalk. This, again, comes out of the ProWag requirements. One option is if your vehicle offloads you directly into the crosshatching area, then take that crosshatching over to the crosswalk toward the left side of the screen. And that brings you by the ramps up to the sidewalk or across the street. Another option would be if your vehicle, especially larger vans, have a ramp that comes out and offload you. This is where that 50% clear space comes in that is in the bike lane. If your vehicle ramps over the cross-hatch area and loads directly to where that bike lane is, then you'd be able to navigate directly into the sidewalk or back again. That clear space is for different vehicles being able to access the space.

But isn't it pro-access? As long as you have one access, you don't need to do both? That was used to be before, because this length of this offload is just 40 feet. So as long as you provide one access for ADA, it's

The 50% free of obstruction is standard. We also know that even though, where my cursor just went, we know this is a requirement. And so we wanted to build that certainly into the design. We also know that most people, if there isn't a ramping situation, or if there isn't a ramp off the vehicle, go to the sidewalk, or sorry, to the crosswalk. And so that's why we wanted to create this situation too. So it is two access points, and it's trying to make sure that people are going to go and make sure that we're providing that safe alternative for them. Passenger examples. Let me talk a little bit about goods. I think the biggest difference here you can see is we are not including pro-wag guidelines into this space. Otherwise, much of this is the same in terms of the kind of citing criteria and the considerations therein. The sign is similar, except for the fact that now we're using a graphic of a truck to, again, express the fact that we want this to be more of a goods scenario. That's not to say someone could not pull in here and drop off a passenger or pick up a passenger. But because we are prioritizing this for goods, we've not introduced those ADA guidelines. So you can see this is a little more of a straightforward application here where we're introducing some markings. the new signage and in this case we are not adjusting the curb so this would be a existing curb that comes back here this is a typical parking lane of eight feet and that curb again would not move under this good situation To a bike lane in this case, we are introducing an area here where the vehicle would come in and load, and then we have a space here, kind of a hatched out area, to unload vehicles. goods and then get to the sidewalk as opposed to what we see in a lot of cases these Boxes are being unloaded into the bike lane, which we don't really want So we want to create some kind of landing area for those boxes to to kind of be loaded off the vehicle and then put on a dolly or some type of other Micro mobility vehicle in some cases and then take into the crosswalk here so we can still maintain safety in the bike lane Lastly, micromobility parking. Sort of the question before, what we're really trying to do is accommodate the parking of bikes and scooters, either shared or personal, in a space below the curb. This would be used in a situation where we are seeing higher demand for that type of parking, and that parking is now creating pedestrian access challenges. If we think about the sidewalk, and we have a bike tied to a a fence or a tree or a lamppost, if we're seeing enough of that, and in particular for adjacent to mobility lanes, there could be a good application for let's actually bring that below curb. We would have a typical sign to indicate where parking is allowed. The installation of bike racks as well as wheel stops to frame off the space. A free zone, kind of striped out zone to access the area. And again, getting the parking below curb in a way that does two things, frees up the sidewalk space and also reinforces daylighting. Because now you can't have a truck illegally load or unload in the no stopping zone because we've incorporated, we've introduced physical infrastructure that still maintains site visibility. You can still see through these bike racks and you can still see above them. So the height is still maintained and the visibility is still maintained. and we're really reinforcing safe practices and making sure we have clear sight triangles for motorists as well as pedestrians and cyclists.

Can I ask one question on that one? The optimal sighting statement there functions best adjacent to mobility infrastructure, so, you know, protected bike lane or other similar stuff, or near crosswalks and intersections. I think that makes sense. I think in the real world, we often see cyclists in particular park as close as they can possibly get to the location they need to go to, which makes perfect sense. So I'm wondering if, you know, in addition to this for optimal sighting, we can include or should we include some version of, like, adjacent to or near... some description of destination. So these are on downtown boulevards or downtown streets. They often have retail. Sometimes they don't. But should there be some component of that, too, where the people typically using these will be using them to go to a shop, a restaurant, the movies, whatever? Is that something we should consider with that?

You know, absolutely. The things we want to consider with the placement, so if we see these kind of more mid-block, we lose some efficiency of the space because once you put that in, you put the buffer, we're now being a little more inefficient with the adjacent curb uses. So we do want to think about adjacency to... either an alley or a curb cut or an intersection. But absolutely, the adjacent land use is obviously going to drive people wanting to kind of end their trip. And so we can make sure that's emphasized there. We also, this does not preclude having above the curb bike racks or other kind of parking opportunities. And we'll make sure that's noted, too. This would not be a, this isn't an or. It's certainly an and when we have the demand that justifies this type of infrastructure. Thanks. Thank you. ProWag. This is right from ProWag. So this is an accessible parking space. Again, we would want to see these closest to the crosswalk. In fact, if you are adjacent to a crosswalk, there is an exclusion where you do not need to recess the curb that five feet. And there's also some right-of-way limitations if you have right-of-way limitations you do not have to bump this out five feet and that is really because we know a lot of our rights-of-way have been here for a long time and they're in older areas of the city where we just can't do this but we still want to provide accessible parking So there are some options to kind of opt out of this, but we wanted to at least include what the design looks like if you were to have the five-foot recessed curb area. And this could, again, be for a retrofit or for any kind of new design. One question we often get from cities, when is this trigger? When do you actually need to put in ADA parking loading that is pro-wag, you know, Compliant, thank you. Typically, what we see is with a capital project where you are doing significant civil work, if you are moving the curb, if you are changing the sidewalk, that would trigger. If you're going to introduce ADA parking on street, gone are the days you can just put up two ADA parking signs and walk away. You would need to make that compliant. And in some cases, some cities have said even when they're resurfacing, a street, that would trigger PROAG, although I would say the jury's still out on that. But definitely if it's a full rebuild of a street and or if you're introducing an ADA parking or loading space and signing it that way, you would need to install this. If you're not doing those things, then you don't need to proactively go put in ADA parking, although we would certainly suggest it. Of course, based on your policies, you want to have an accessible right-of-way, but that is not a requirement. There are certain triggers that kind of push you into that pro-ag requirement.

I thought if you're government, you touch it, you have to do it. It's different for private entities to do, but if you introduce even one parking as government, you have to include it. ADA parking. I know it because I had to do it for the parks. That's what I'm saying.

Actually, I should identify myself. I haven't done that yet. Andrew Bossie, Montgomery County DOT. I always forget that. The accessible parking has actually been around for a couple of years now. We had the accessible design guide approved, I think, in 2024, which first introduced some guidance on this. And we've been pushing for this, but not just our own projects at DOT, but also with development projects are also now obliged to be meeting this. I think it's... 20% of on-the-streets paid spaces, might be 25%, it's about that, have to be ADA compliant. And I know that there has, you mentioned about pushback before. There has been pushback on that extra space requirement, that extra design requirement from private developers. Usually, again, with the street buffer, the space is generally there, but it's extra design effort, drainage effort, and so forth that I know people have not been happy about designing, but is now a federal requirement, and it's here.

I know we've had a lot of questions during the presentation. Certainly appreciate the feedback that we'll be incorporating into the final document. And if there's any further questions, we're happy to answer them on the presentation on the guide.

This is great. Thank you. I'm glad that you guys are, like, have been proactive in this and all the hard work you've done over the past year in putting this together. Are there in the plans now to enact this? Are there any, like, test, not tests, but are locations where, like, are to roll this out and to see how it goes. And could you talk a little about that, Mr. Boss?

Yeah. We were talking about this a couple weeks ago. Our current thinking is to identify a pilot location and try to apply what we have in the guide, see how it works. I'm sure that will inform for probably a version two after we see how that goes. But at this point, we don't have a location or resources identified for that other than we expect we'll try to soon.

OK.

And then for staff, this is our design guidelines. So I guess when do you think, well, will we first need to have those pilot programs before we, as we do master plans or as we review projects or something like that? What do you think, staff, you know?

Richard Brockmeyer, I'll take first. Dave and Robert can chime in as well. I think for master plans, probably the pilots would have to come first, because those deal with new roads, but mostly existing roads. looking at existing roads and piloting how you incorporate this on more constrained roadway probably would have to happen first. For a new development, I think we could start looking at this to help guide new developments where new roads are being sort of proposed, especially these types of roads, downtown boulevards, downtown streets, town center boulevards, and town center streets. We can at least start thinking about when we're talking about these curb uses, have this guidance to help us as we start to evaluate development projects that are proposing new rights of way.

Thank you so much. Any other comments or questions?

If I could add on to that a little bit. I think with master plans, the biggest thing is from a DOT's perspective, obviously master plans aren't getting into the operations as much, but whether or not we have that space in the first place, that eight feet of curbside space in the first place, that's usually when we're trying to fit things into limited right-of-way, that's one of the first things that gets cut out of those cross-sections, which means this doesn't apply on those streets at all. So as master plans are thinking, if we do want these sorts of applications in, that eight feet of space suddenly becomes much more important to work into those cross-sections.

Thank you.

Vice Chair.

Yeah, I just have one more comment. First, this is a great document. It's a great starting point. And as you mentioned, I don't think there's that many of these around the country right now. So it's pretty innovative, and it'll be cool to see kind of how this can get demonstrated and piloted in different circumstances. So I'm looking forward to that. I want to just mention one small thing around parklets and community gathering spaces. and how it's listed as a medium priority for both downtown boulevards and downtown streets. I want to just focus on the boulevard side of that for a second because there aren't that many downtown boulevards, but typically, you know, I'm thinking about the Wisconsins and downtown Bethesda, Georgia Avenue, you know, Old Georgetown Road and downtown Bethesda. These are typically like big six-lane, relatively fast-moving streets, and considering that this curb width, as you've talked about, there's not that much space. I'm wondering if parklets and community gathering spaces, how much can we actually fit in that kind of space that would feel comfortable for people in those big road environments? Which isn't to say that you couldn't make it work. It's not to say that there couldn't be an opportunity to maybe try something. But I think we should maybe think a little bit more carefully around that particular thing on that particular road, and the context that could make it more or less comfortable. And, you know, because what we don't want to have happen, which we see sometimes, is like we do something in the right of way, we think it's going to be cool, and no one uses it, right? It's just left empty, and it's not activated at all. And I think there's reasons for that so kind of like understanding what those reasons might be and trying to get out in front of like an interesting idea that doesn't actually fit the way that people want to use it. So I just wanted to flag flag that for for parklets and and boulevards I think there's probably plenty of opportunities on downtown streets for that, and I think that's great, but on the big roads with fast moving cars that feels maybe a little bit harder.

That use bounced around between low and medium for us right up until pretty much no press time. And especially on the boulevard types, it was kind of hard to justify having it low down with unmanaged parking. It felt like it should be better than that. But it has these difficulties that come, especially with the bigger streets. I think there will be hurdles for us at DOT to figure out if and whenever we do implement those spaces of what uses are allowed in that space. Is it just some benches that Is it active recreation? Obviously, the Great Seneca Plan introduced the idea of getting more stuff in these sorts of spaces, which as a person who would use these things, I think sounds cool. But as a DOT agency, we're concerned about maintenance, liability, and all that stuff that comes wrapped up into it, all that would have to be figured out the second we put one of these facilities in, even if it's on one of the smaller streets. So very much valid concerns that we'll have to navigate, yes.

Well, great. Thank you. I have one comment.

Please. My comment is a compliment. Mr. Farron, you did an outstanding job in your presentation and answering our questions as you went along, and it's evident that you were well prepared and ready to answer them, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

That ends this presentation, and we'll just take a two-minute break. and come back to do item number 11, MCPS Shady Grove Bus Depot relocation, mandatory referral, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number 11, the MCPS Shady Grove Bus Depot relocation mandatory referral, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this afternoon, we have Emily Tuttlebaum with the planning department presenting this item. Welcome, Ms. Tuttlebaum.

Thank you, Chair Harrison. Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Emily Tetelbaum with the East County Planning Division. As you mentioned here, to present the MCPS Shady Grove Bus Depot relocation mandatory referral number MR2026033. And we're recommending approval of the mandatory referral and transmittal of the comments to the Department of General Services to relocate the MCPS bus maintenance and training facility to an existing warehouse on an industrial site located at 861 East Goody Drive in Rockville. So the site is east of 270 on the northwest corner of East Scooty Drive and Dover Road. It's just north of the municipal boundary of the city of Rockville. You can see the municipal boundary here in yellow. And the property is within an industrial area and surrounded by other industrial and commercial properties in the area. IH, heavy industrial, and IM, moderate industrial zones. So the property that's subject to the mandatory referral is 6.81 acres in the IMF 2.5H70 moderate industrial floating zone, and it's within the 2004 Upper Rock Creek Master Plan area. The property contains a one-story, 65,000-square-foot warehouse that you can see right here, and it's surrounded by a surface parking lot. The warehouse was previously used as a Coca-Cola facility and an Amazon warehouse. There's currently two driveways, one on East Goody Drive right here and one on Dover Road right here. And those two driveways will continue to serve the property for the proposed use. So the county secured a long-term lease for the property, which you can see right here. The subject property is this red star right here. And the current location of the MCPS maintenance and training facility is right here, close to the Shady Grove Metro. So this use is part of the larger MCPS bus depot facility at this location. So a portion of it is moving to the property that we're looking at today. And so moving these facilities to this site here will facilitate the future mixed-use redevelopment of this site that's very close to the Shady Grove Metro Station. So the project is an adaptive reuse of this existing property, as I mentioned. The warehouse will be renovated and used for service and maintenance of the MCPS bus fleet. It'll also be used for employee offices and training classrooms. All of the bus maintenance work will happen within the warehouse. And buses will access the property from the Dover Road side here. And then personal vehicles can use either access point. 34 bus parking spaces that are seen delineated here on the plan will be added to the existing parking lot, and a training area with two training pads will also be added to the lot right here. And the training area is... is to train drivers and help them on their way to earning the commercial driver's license, the CDL license. This property will be the permanent work location for MCPS fleet staff and include 27 bus mechanics and 63 administrative staff will also work at the facility. It will operate 24 hours a day on weekdays and will be closed generally on weekends except for emergencies. So there has been quite a bit of outreach about this project. DGS held a community meeting this spring. And there have been 11 briefings to the Shady Grove Implementation Committee over the past few years. And the city of Rockville was also briefed last year. And we have not received any correspondence about this mandatory referral. So we find that the mandatory referral meets all the requirements of the mandatory referral uniform standards as detailed in the staff report. It's consistent with all the county plans and the county general plan with the intent and requirements of the zoning district. It's compatible with the surrounding area and the the location of the building is not changing there are some slight changes to the circulation on the property but the building itself is not changing there is an approved forest conservation exemption for this project and with that we recommend approval of the mandatory referral and transmittal of comments to dgs and i'm happy to answer any questions

Well, thank you, Ms. Tettelbaum. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Ronnie Warner with the Department of General Services. I have no additional comments to add to staff's very thorough summary.

Great. Great. Thank you. Well, I'd like to say that I'm glad you're coming forward with this mandatory referral. I'm moving forward with the future relocation of the buses at the Shady Grove site so that that area can continue its redevelopment. So thank you for that. Just out of curiosity, if you're able to answer, what percent of what's going on there now will come here to this site?

So MCPS will keep their depot operations on Shady Grove, which is basically the majority of their buses with staff who will oversee the buses serving the schools. So everything else will move to this site. And after they move, we will demolish all of the buildings there. MCPS will maintain operations on the depot using portables.

Okay.

And the fueling will remain there until MCPS relocates the balance of the buses elsewhere.

Okay, so that's still a process?

It is still a process. So MCPS is working on other locations to move the depot operations. They did submit funding for that in this past budget year. So I'm not... She's 100% certain where all of that stands, but MCPS is actively working on that.

Okay, great, great. So I'll let the other board.

Just your continual question, not my question. So is that area, that existing bus location, is it available for development?

We need to see how this will all work. It is unlikely given the number of buses that will remain behind. Right now, the entire property is one parcel. It's 45 acres. We are aware that there is some environmental cleanup that needs to happen. And because of how MDE operates, we would need to subdivide the property to get sign off if we wanted to develop part of it. But that is something that we would discuss with the new administration on which direction they would like us to go.

Yeah, I believe this is the last piece left on that crops branch way, because everything else has been moved.

I was part of that.

And I wasn't sure. I was very happy to see that eventually this is coming. But I didn't realize that there's still a good portion would be left there, because That's a great place, opportunity for some housing. And I know that there was a design for park and everything at that corner also.

Correct. And it was now about a year and a half and maybe even longer. We spent quite a bit of an effort, the Department of General Services, doing community outreach and land planning for what? could happen on the east side of Krabs Branch Way. So we're very excited to see that redevelopment happen. And this is the final step to making that happen.

So do you have any kind of ideas where the rest would move? Do you have any prospect?

We don't until we have a better time frame for MCPS moving the balance of the buses.

I have no other comments or questions. Any of the other board members? Seeing no other comments or questions, is there a motion to move forward with the approval of the mandatory referral with conditions? Yeah, I'll move to approve the mandatory referral with conditions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

We'll take another quick two-minute break and then start with item number 12, the Sonina Properties, Apartments, Administrative Subdivision, Expedited Plan, Approval Plan, and Final Forest Conservation Plan. We'll also approve the, if these others are approved, we'll adopt the resolutions. Thank you. Back, we're on item number 12, the Sunina Properties Apartments Administrative Subdivision Expedited Approval Plan and Final Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this afternoon, we have Tamika Graham presenting this project. Welcome.

Commissioners, for the record, my name is Tamika Graham, and on behalf of the East County Regulatory Team, we're pleased to present this project to you. So it has three applications to it, the administrative plan, the administrative subdivision plan, the expedited plan, and the forest conservation plan. And we are recommending that the planning board approve each of these applications for the reasons that I will cover in our findings with all of the conditions that are listed in our staff report. And we have one change that we'll talk about a little bit later. So one of our applications under consideration for approval today, as I just mentioned, is the Expedited Approval Plan, or the EAP. And it's for the commercial to residential reconstruction, or CRR, plan type. And this is intended specifically for land uses that meet the definition of this use. So it's a limited use in the CR zone, with one exception in the LSC zone. And it's really a project where you have an existing commercial building that's at least two stories high, and it has at least 50% vacancy. And the proposal is to convert it to residential for multi-unit residential living or townhouse living. And so this proposal before you today satisfies that definition with 55% vacancy. And we are talking about a multi-unit living building. So just for our listeners out there, an EAP replaces the sketch plan and the site plan, but in this instance, the subdivision plan is still required, and that's why we have the administrative subdivision with this. And then one thing to note about this process is that it has a 60- to 65-day review window to bring it before you. Okay, so switching gears from process, let's look at the vicinity of the area. This project is in Long Branch, and it's just outside of the city of Tacoma Park limits, as you can see here outlined on the map, and it's approximately one-tenth of a mile west of the Montgomery-Prince George's County border, as you can see here. This graphic also shows you the context of the area. There are a lot of single-family dwellings that confront the property to the north. I think the most significant feature here is the alignment of the Purple Line. The site is within walking distance to two of the future Purple Line stations, so we have Piney Branch Station to the north, and then the Tacoma Langley Station to the south. So the site is outlined in red. It's addressed at 831 University Boulevard East, and it's right near this intersection of University Boulevard with Forreston Street. We also have some adjacent uses that include Tacoma Academy School, Tacoma Park Spanish, Southern Day of Vintage Church. And then you can also see, for some more context, that we have different zoning districts that surround the property. But getting back to the site here, you can see that it's this pentagon-shaped, and it's also surrounded on four sides by roadways. So again, University Boulevard to the east, we have Forreston Road to the north, a portion of Glenville Road to the west, and then there's a little portion down by the southeast that abuts Carroll Avenue. The property is located in the Long Branch Sector Plan. It's 2.72 acres, and it's also located within our commercial residential town zoning district with a maximum height of 60 feet. So you can see here that it is currently improved. It has a commercial building on it, which is roughly 3,100 square feet. And you can also see that it's surrounded by a lot of surface parking. And you can also notice that there's not a lot of landscaping or trees on the site. So in terms of project history, this did come in for site plan approval in May of 2025. That was for the redevelopment of the site with a multifamily building with up to 148 units. But this application has been requested to be withdrawn by the applicant in order for them to proceed with the applications that we're talking about today. So getting into the proposal, it's actually similar to the prior approval. So it will demolish the existing outdated building. It will replace it with one multifamily residential building, as I mentioned, with 148 units. And this proposal is also including 17.5% or 26 in total moderately priced dwelling units. And this percentage is actually a little bit higher because it's required through a recent zoning tax amendment, which incentivizes this conversion from vacant office to housing. But another thing to note is that this project will bring a significant amount of environmental enhancements So we'll see improved stormwater management conditions. We'll see some green cover, green roof, microbiome retention facilities. And we'll also see 25% tree canopy over a portion of the surface parking area. And there's also a mix of housing types included in the project. So in terms of access and circulation to this property, the primary access point will be from Glenville Road. right here and parking will be provided in the project with a mix of a little bit of surface parking in the rear of the project and then there's also two portions of separated parking structured parking facility so the north portion will be at grade and then the southern portion of the parking will be will be under the building. And this arrangement is primarily due to the grading and the context of the site. And then a total of 116 parking spaces will be proposed. One loading space, as you can see here. But also another thing to note is that the project is proposing a 10-foot wide landscape buffer along the western portion of the property. And that will shield the surface parking from adjacent uses. And then there will also be additional plantings along the south portion of the property to provide some cover from the drive aisle that's located on this side. The project is providing short-term and long-term bicycle parking. There will also be a bicycle repair station. And we also have some frontage improvements that will be required all for abutting roadways. Along Forreston Street and Glenville Road, we will have some new sidewalks and new street trees. And then getting into some of the changes along University Boulevard, you can see here we have the alignment for the Purple Line. You have the current travel lanes. But the project is proposing to accommodate an eight-foot-wide sidewalk, an expanded bicycle buffer, and then also buffered bike lanes. And so here you have the cross section for Carroll Avenue. You can see here that the project will also accommodate NCDOT's capital improvement project design for new protected bicycle lanes as well. So shifting to the architecture of this building, you can see here on your left, we've provided an existing view from University Boulevard. And then on the right side, you can see what's proposed. So the building consists of two wings, as I mentioned, wing A and B. They will range from four to six stories in height. And what the applicant has done here with this portion is to make it a brick front, and this is the lower portion to provide more compatibility with the adjacent residential neighborhood. But this U-shaped building will expand really the length of this property from north to south. The main entrance of the building is right off of University Boulevard, and you can see here there's a high degree of transparency with all of the high windows. And then there's a secondary access to the building off of Forreston Street as well. Here is another view of the building. Again, left image of the existing view. This is primarily from Forest and Street looking south into the property. And then the picture on the right side is a view from University Boulevard and Forest and Street a little bit slightly rotated. But you can really see here that this is a substantial transformation of what's currently on site. And then you can also see the character, and it's keeping in character with the surrounding area. So this project, so the applicant still has the option to utilize the legacy public benefit point system, which they've opted to do here. The project is required to provide a minimum of 50 public benefit points in at least three categories, but they are exceeding that minimum requirement by providing improvements in four categories, a total over 80 points. And this includes transit proximity, connectivity and mobility, quality building and site design. And that's for the high-quality architecturals and exceptional design that you saw in the elevations. And they're also proposing protection and enhancement of the natural environment. So that includes cool roof on the building, vegetated roof, as well as energy conservation. And staff supports each of these categories that are proposed. 10% of open space is required, but the applicant is proposing 13%. And they are complying with our recreation guidelines because they exceed 20 units. You can see here, these are just various elements that are proposed on the site. It includes some seating, some grilling areas. There are some game stations. There's a tot lot that has elements that make it accessible for all physical abilities. There's also an indoor fitness room, and then there's also a multi-purpose lobby area. The applicant provided a noise analysis that measured many key points throughout this development. It also accounted for future noise from the Purple Line. And noise levels in the outdoor areas to the west of the proposed building will not exceed the 65 A weighted decibels for average day and night sound level. However, the study did reveal that a portion of the proposed development that's closest to University Boulevard will be exposed to levels that exceed the 65 threshold. So we do have conditions of approval that require the applicant to come into compliance with those noise guidelines, and the standard building construction will need to be modified depending on the noise level specific to each noise impacted unit. In that area, there are really no environmentally sensitive areas or forests on the subject property, but based on that tract area and off-site work, the subject property's total afforestation requirement is 0.33 acres, and the applicant is proposing to meet this requirement by purchasing from a mitigation bank or through a fee-in-lieu payment.

So I have a question here. We said that there is no forest on the land right now. So I'm trying to understand, because I had got this comment before also, that if there is no forest on a piece of land, we still require to do FSD, Forest Conservation. Yes. Could you explain why? Because I know that we have to do it, but someone asked me, and I have no idea how to answer this. I don't know. And what is the requirement? Do they still have to go through the full NRI FSD requirements for something that doesn't even exist?

They do, and I see my colleague joining me. I'll turn it over to Bianca.

Yeah. For the record, Bianca Novena with the Environment and Climate Division. So an NRI at FSC is required for pretty much almost all the development plans. So it looks at if there are natural resources or none. For the forest conservation requirements for the afforestation, due to the no net loss provisions in the forest conservation law, that even if there is no forest on site the way the worksheet works, there is a forestation requirement that results from that.

Yeah. And what's the reason for that? Even if they don't cut any tree or don't do anything, still they have to go purchase off-site or in lieu or plant? Could they plant some trees on-site and cover, or it has to be forest?

They could. I guess the way meeting the forest conservation requirements work is there is a preferred sequence. And so applicants can choose to plant on-site to meet their forest conservation requirements. But if there are no suitable areas on-site, then they could choose to purchase off-site mitigation credits. Or if there are no credits available, then it will be a fee-in-lieu payment.

Yeah, but planting tree doesn't cover it, correct? It has to be like contiguous area, point to the tree contiguous in the same area. Just planting tree doesn't do it. So why do we have that? Why do we ask them to do reforestation when there is no forest?

I'll interrupt real quick. So Commissioner, there's two components to forest conservation. One is afforestation. And that's what's here, where you have no trees on the site. And you have kind of a lower threshold to replant. And that replanting can either be on site, or in some cases, you can pay a fee in lieu, so that we're supporting the environmental goals for the state and the county to replace or provide forest where there was none. There's a reforestation requirement, which I don't believe this one had a reforestation requirement. where if you're taking forest down, then you're replacing it at a certain ratio as well. So there's kind of two catches to the forest conservation law. One is if you don't have any forest on site, they want you to plant somewhere. And I think there used to be a mechanism where we could take some credit for tree planting on site. but a lot of the tree planting that we see is in the public right-of-way, and that usually double-dips and doesn't quite get us where we want it to be for getting credits for tree planting.

Okay, I get that. Then, in general, then the answer is that even though if there is no tree or no forest, and I just say no forest, not tree, no forest on the site, we still required to do some due diligence for having forests contribute to the forest within the state or within the county. That is a requirement that every development has to pay. And does it have an offset limit if it is a single property? Supposedly that someone has just one land and go through the subdivision to make it a duplex or triplex, do they still have to go through this and pay that?

There's still a mechanism. Forest conservation is generally dictated by the size of the property itself. So if it's over 40,000 square feet, you're automatically going to get subject to forest conservation. There's certain exemptions that could apply that would get you out of some of those requirements. And the Since we're at a forest conservation stage, they haven't really qualified for those exemptions to be able to do that. Okay. And, you know, for downtown areas and areas like this, the reason you do have a fee-in-lieu option is because we know you can't always get tree planting on these sites, and so the other option is either to plant or pay a fee-in-lieu off-site.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah, great question. So getting into the analysis and findings, the administrative subdivision plan, expedited plan, and the forest conservation plan meet all applicable requirements of subdivision regulations, zoning ordinance, forest conservation law, and also the long branch sector plan. The applications are in conformance with the development standards of the CRT zone. They provide adequate open space and recreation, and they meet the environmental guidelines, and they're also compatible with the development in the surrounding neighborhood. All other public facilities and services, such as water and sewer, will be adequate to serve the site, and we've addressed all of the other findings that are detailed in our staff report. Community Outreach, the applicant has met all the proper signage noticing and submittal requirements. They held a, I'm sorry that shouldn't be virtual, they held an in-person public meeting and there were a few questions, three questions particularly that were raised during that meeting. that related to the number of bedrooms being provided in the project, inter parcel connectivity, and then also access to the site. And there were responses provided to those residents during the meeting. But I'll just cite them here as well. In terms of four bedrooms, the project is providing units that go up to a maximum of three bedrooms. There is no inter-parcel connectivity. There will be no inter-parcel connectivity to the south, to that existing church. And as I mentioned earlier, the primary access point into the site will be from Glenville Road, and that was coordinated with all of the agencies, SHA, MCDOT, and then also our transportation division. And just to point out that this project is in a red policy area, and so it is exempt from our local area transportation review, and they do not have to submit a traffic study. But nevertheless, the applicant did do their due diligence. They conducted a queuing analysis of the area, and the conclusion was that the new trips will still remain lower than the trips from the prior use.

So can I ask you a question? Interparcel connectivity. You said there is none. Even what about bike or pedestrian?

Sorry?

When you say none, you mean by cars?

Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, vehicle connections.

But people can have a side path or bike path or sidewalk for people that they're going to be here. They want to go to the church. They should have accessibility to walk to the church.

Yeah, there will be sidewalks along Forreston, University Boulevard, and Carroll Avenue, as well as the state capital improvement project bike lanes along University and Carroll.

But not through the site. People cannot walk through the site. Not through the site.

It'll be along the travel lanes.

So was it issue with the grading that they couldn't provide connection? I don't know.

If it would be helpful, Commissioner, maybe we could put up the image to show you, and then we can kind of talk through that. Just give us a moment, please.

Thank you.

So yeah, maybe through this aerial might be the best way to look at it. Yeah, so these existing access points will be eliminated, and the primary access to the site will be provided from Glenville Road.

Yeah, and maybe when... I don't know if they have a site plan that they can show. Can someone walk out of the site onto University, or can they walk onto the site onto Carroll? Or do they have to go through the same process? entrance-exit points that the cars go through. But maybe, I don't know if the applicants plan to give a presentation and show anything.

Well, someone came, sat there to answer the question. This gentleman came front, so...

For the record, my name is Carlos Pesmino. I work under the Transportation Planning Division. I help review this plan. The pedestrian circulation will be primarily centered from University Boulevard and Carroll Avenue. that would connect into an enhanced sidewalk to bike trails, well, protected bike lanes, and obviously the Purple Line. The interconnectivity that currently exists through that parking lot behind the commercial zone, Tacoma Park, Spanish STA Church, Tacoma Academy Prep School, is already fairly limited. I don't think we have any Google map images.

It shows on the map that from the site right now, the current site on the south, there is, from the parking, they could just come straight to the church. Correct. They just walk to the church. Is that going to be taken away?

My understanding is that there is going to be screening. It's going to be separated between the Sunin Apartments and the Spanish SDA church. But again, pedestrian circulation will be circulated from University Boulevard through the sidewalk to connect to the church as well.

So why didn't they want that? Somebody didn't want that easy connection that's very easy rather than walking. They can just push the stroller and get there. Just curious.

Actually, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. My name is Eric Colbert with Eric Colbert and Associates Architects. And I just wanted to point out that one of the first things that happened when we were planning this project is Dr. Chawla contacted the church and asked if we could create... a passageway through there and they were not interested in making that connection.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. I thought they want it. If they don't want it, then that's fine.

Okay. Staff can complete their presentation.

I will wrap it up. Since during this review and also after we posted the staff report, we did not receive any written correspondence on this application. We wanted to make one request to remove condition 19-K. to be reflected in the resolution. This is on page 12 of the staff report, and this is under the expedited plan approval. And there will be stamped concrete in the area of the loading to help enhance it, but the mural is not accurate, and so we need to update that. Again, staff recommends approval of this project and the three applications that are associated with it. And just to add a finer point on all the benefits of this project, not only is it bringing added units to our housing inventory, But as I mentioned, there will be substantial stormwater management improvements. We're also seeing a substantial mitigation of the urban heat island effect by eliminating that large surface parking area. And we also see a lot of greening of the site. And so this is just a strong project that demonstrates how this redevelopment can support the county's climate goals. This is near an existing transit, and then it's also close to the soon-to-open Purple Line. So a lot of merits to this project, and we're available to answer any additional questions.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful presentation. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

I'm grateful to the staff over here. They've been amazingly cooperative and very, very receptive, very engaging. Nothing but positive to say about all the people I've worked with as we're going through this process.

Thank you.

Would the architect like any? I would just like to say that we've really enjoyed working with the staff on this project. In March to April of 25, we responded. That was our first time to formally respond to staff comments. We find the massing and lobby glazing and added high parapet addresses to the Carroll University Boulevard intersection. And then at the June 5, 2025 meeting, the planning board granted a sketch plan approval, and the written resolution included a very nice endorsement of the exterior architecture of the building. And then in May to June 2026, in response to staff comments, we refined the balcony, roof treatment, wing A, the main curved part of the building. We made some adjustments to the cladding treatment and the rear courtyard facing curved wall, signage, and wall panels. Shortly after that, we obtained their approval for the changes that they recommended that we incorporated. And we're looking forward to moving forward.

Great. Thank you. Yeah, it is a very attractive project. Very, very good location, close to the two Purple Line stops. And it's in a walkable community. And we definitely have a housing crisis, and it helps to address that. So thank you for this project. Just a couple of questions for staff. You talked about some of the noise that the exterior, there was like 70. I know you can't always get down to 65 on exterior. The applicant, is there a way that you plan to go from 70 to 65 on the exterior? I don't know. I know you could get it from 65 to 45 interior, but how do you plan to do that on the exterior? May I answer that? Yes, please. No, it was for you. Oh, OK.

So we had a sound test done, and based on that, the results All the dwelling unit windows on University Boulevard and some on the return side walls have a minimum sound transmission coefficient of 30. And according to our sound engineer, that would be adequate to assure the required decibel reduction within the dwelling unit. I see the dwelling, but I thought exterior.

Are we not required to meet exterior sound requirements, too, or no?

So the exterior guidelines is mainly for outdoor spaces that are usable. So for the space in the rear of the building, noise levels over there do not exceed 65 because it is being shielded by the building.

OK, I misunderstood. I thought I saw the 70s. OK, great. Thank you. So one of my comments, maybe it's, so you're able to use the old benefit point standard because our incentive zoning new standards hadn't been approved. When must you start meeting the new standards? Because we had another project today that opted for the old

The new one?

The older one.

Oh, they walked for the old one as well. OK. Katie Mencarini, for the record. So the provision by which you can choose to go under the older than new will sunset on January 1, 2027. OK, great. OK. So they had the option, and they took the option.

OK, great, great. And then last question. Can you talk about the schedule? It's your schedule, but I'm just out of curiosity. What are the next steps? When do you think you may be applying for building permits? And when do you hope to start construction, just out of curiosity?

The project is under review by four different departments. We'll be planning MCDPS, stormwater management update, because the state has asked for the additional non-roofed-up disconnect buffer, which is shown. They already agreed. They also added that they wanted to include some downstream storm drain analysis beyond Forston, which we have done that, and they have released their letter subject to additional study points, which is okay. We have done that as well. There was a question regarding the right-of-way improvements. Even though the sidewalk is just built less than a year ago, even though the construction is not complete, they are asking us to widen the sidewalk so there will be a new access permit, new design for the new sidewalk. That's also been done, but it's not under review yet. Why? Because the hydrology, hydraulics was part of the first submission. In addition to that, the Montgomery County DOT is asking a brand-new sidewalk Long Forsten. which is being provided. So there will be a separate permit needed for the right-of-way as well. We have already coordinated with Steve Smith for the record plat submission. We will be filing the record plat, hopefully, in the next two weeks. The record plat filing alone will not be adequate. Why? Because WSSC will also require what they call a site utility plan. Normally, just a connection. We're not adding any main line on site, but we're adding a new water line connection, which is more than four inches. It's like six inches or eight inches with the fire hydrant already existing. We're also keeping a new sewer connection along Forston because the Forston connection was not adequate in their mind. They said we want to see what they call the HPA. Therefore, WSSC's ongoing review is ongoing, so that's going to delay the project a little bit. Our guess is the record plant might take 90 days. The bonding and the permitting might take another three months after that. So building permit filing will be permitted, hopefully, when the record player is filed. That's normal. We'll check that as well. We think that the plans are ready, approximately 90%, which is normally not the case. Having said that, the building permit could be filed earlier than normally. But the review of the building permit will not be complete until the Montgomery County DPS, Montgomery County DOT, WSSC, and the State Highway all sign off on it. There may be MDE normal requirement for the NRI, which will be also submitted. That's just information only. So we think we're on the right track. My guess would be the construction may not start for about six, seven months. Demolition? may start earlier with the approval of the planning board resolution. So you might see the construction starting in less than a month, maybe two, for the demolition of the building. We're waiting on it. So I think Dr. Chawla can add anything to it.

No, it sounds like you're thinking about a year. You start construction. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the board?

I have a comment. I'm appreciative of the fact that you withdrew your prior application we approved on May 25th, and you resubmitted it to take advantage of the expedited process. And I'd like to commend you on that. And I believe you're the first developer to do that. and that that has come before us maybe the second but i'm excited for this development it's in a part of the county that needs it and again last time you were here i said that you were going to be a beacon of light for that area and a the ignition to get redevelopment in the area started and i'm excited for you guys to demolish the building and put up a new one thanks

So, great. Hearing no other questions or comments, so we have three, I think, three approvals. And each of them we will add on the adopting the resolution. So the first is the motion to approve the subdivision plan where staff is recommending approval with conditions and to also adopt that specific portions of the resolution.

Yeah. I'll move to approve the administrative subdivision plan with conditions and approve the resolution as well.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. The second is there a motion to approve the expedited approval plan where staff is recommending approval of conditions and to also approve the resolution.

I'll move to approve the expedited approval plan with conditions by staff and then approve the resolution as well.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. And lastly, is there a motion to approve the final forest conservation plan where staff is recommending conditions and Also the approval of the resolution.

I'll move to approve the final forest conservation plan with conditions as well as the accompanying resolution. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. I look forward to your project moving forward. And before we end today, we have to revisit item 5A, which is development review application fee. There's a one clarification that we need to go over so that we can make sure we get that done. Mr. Kronenberg, are you? Oh, we're done with you, sir.

Thank you, Chair. And my apologies for having to come back to you for two corrected items from this morning's agenda. And I just had two corrected slides up here. We inadvertently, and I'll take the blame for this, we have a typo, two typos.

Excuse me, one second.

Sure. Very excited, yes.

Please resume.

So thank you. You'll see two strikeouts here on a slide that we presented earlier. Our current fee is $350 per dwelling unit before we even came to you today. And so $250 had been listed. That's incorrect. It's $350. The intent was to bump that up $75 per dwelling unit. So this just shows you the correction that should be part of the resolution and part of what our new fees would be. And I have one more slide, which is really just a clarification. But I want to make sure that the board is fine with this. It's reflective of kind of our current status and what our intent was today. And then the second slide. was really just we had shown $4,350 for the admin subs that were associated with this on page five of the report. and just a correction that that should really be $42.50. So those were the two corrections that we had today, but I wanted to make sure that the board was aware of those on the record.

Right, and the $42.50 is also the current price? It's the current price. Okay, great, great. Thank you. I have no questions or comments.

You know what? I'm sorry. It's $42.50 for the straight admin subs, not the ones associated with it. with the expedited approval. So my apologies. Double correction.

No, no worries. Any questions or comments from the board? None. So is there approval, a motion to approve the development application fee update with these corrections as presented by Mr. Cronenberg. I'll move to approve the fees with these corrections. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you.

Ayes have it 5-0. Thank you and this officially ends our planning board meeting for today and we'll see you next Thursday. Thank you. Have a great weekend.