the one item we have tonight. So we'll go ahead and call this meeting or this is the Tuesday, October 1, 2024 meeting of the Alexandria Planning Commission. Let me start by reading speaker instructions. You wish to speak on a docker item and have not already signed up to do so. Please fill out a speaker form online by following the sign up to speak hyperlink, present on the cover page of this evening's public hearing docker or in person by filling out a hard copy speaker form, which are at the back. Please note, comments from the public are limited to three minutes per speaker with the exception of applicants in their representation. To make your public comment on the Zoom app, please click the raise hand button located on the Zoom task bar once we call your name in order for staff to unmute you. To make your public comment from dining into tonight's meeting via phone, please press star nine to execute the raise hand function once you're your name. 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So that will take us to our first item, which is a discussion item on trailers for commercial use. Yes. Good evening, Chair, members of the Planning Commission. I'm Ann Horowitz with the Department of Planning and Zoning, and I'm here to represent staff this evening on the discussion for trailers for commercial uses. The regulations, which as you are aware, for temporary trailers housing commercial uses requires a full hearing special use permit approval from City Council with planning commission's recommendation to City Council. and has not been amended since. As you are aware, we've also had a number of temporary trailer requests increasing in recent years, and I'll go over a few of those in a subsequent slide. We are here at your request. You had mentioned you'd like to have an open discussion on things you'd like to see, for temporary trailers, the future use of them in the city. And we are very interested in learning your perspectives on what you value about the commercial use of trailers and what you view as the land use concerns. I've identified a few topics that you may like to consider in your discussion. It's certainly not limited to those few. There are many, many thoughts I'm sure that are out there. So first, I just want to briefly provide a background on some information that might be helpful for your discussion. These are the 11 temporary trailers that City Council has approved in the past four years. Actually in the past five years with 2019 there were no requests. The, typically the temporary trailers were approved for a two-year time limit. And that is the standard, I would say, time limit that trailers had been limited to in previous years. There were exceptions over the course of these 11 reviews and those were primarily related to restaurants that were approved for two years with an additional three year option through administrative SUP. The uses that came forward to use the trailers were limited to the previous to 2019. And so those are, many of those are still in active use. One thing that staff identified as somewhat of a trend is that when a restaurant was coming forward to for housing in a temporary trailer. It was often discussed that that was, it deserved a five-year term. It was a more vibrant use. It engaged the community. And subsequently, it was given a total of five years between the SUP, full hearing approval in the administrative SUP. We have also looked at what our neighboring jurisdictions have done, how they're viewing trailers. We looked at their zoning ordinances and could identify a few trends here that the they all to one extent or another viewed trailers as structures as buildings and were regulated through building permits with the opportunity to apply the building, the state building code and fire codes. So other findings were that the commercial uses allowed sometimes were accessory to other uses that were on the property. And all of those uses were in compliance, had to be in compliance with the zoning ordinance requirements. One exception is Arlington County, where they did have an administrative approval, other than these by right approvalsvals that deferred to the building and fire codes. And it was an administrative approval for a few temporary uses, offices, schools, construction related uses. And those were typically approved for a five-year time period. So moving on, word. Staff has just looking at some of these, some of this background, other jurisdictions, what they've done, looked at our history of SUVP approvals for trailers. We thought we would just add a few ideas here. They are only for your consideration to facilitate discussion, not by no means are a staff recommendation, but just some thoughts. So a consideration is looking at temporary, well, they wouldn't, looking at trailers as by right uses, requiring no administrative SUP approval or full hearing approval, and depending on the state building code, fire, health department would be able to weigh in to manage and regulate health and safety issues. Again, they would still be only permitted in commercial zones and whatever use would be in that zone would have to be subject to, would have to be allowed in that zone and subject to the corresponding approval regulation, such as by right, administrative SUP or SUP. Another thought is to shift the full hearing SUP reviews to administrative SUPs. And we do this for public academic schools at this time. They have a limit of five years as a temporary use. Some thoughts here, what we did is looked at the commonly requested uses over the past few years and divided them into two, time limit categories, one with two years, the uses like storage or a private commercial or private academic school that are not as, not in commercial corridors necessarily, not, you know, are not engaging the community and don't contribute to vitality. The two years would provide the applicant with an opportunity to make some alternative arrangements to address and all these different kinds of issues. Perhaps you might want to consider approval with no time limit for those active uses. Restaurants and retail shopping establishments. Public academic schools, as I mentioned already, have a five year term. As it is, a city function, the school uses, we were considering that the city would have the ability to responsibly manage those types of trailer uses. And in closing, we are, those are some thoughts. We just wanted to provide to facilitate any kind of discussion. And we are interested in your thoughts about any kind of land use concerns related to trailers you might have, what you see as their benefits. And we are happy to take those thoughts forward for a potential zoning text amendment. Thank you. Okay, a couple of questions I have and we'll turn to other commissioners for questions. Right now, I think one of the challenges that we have is that the trailers are, you know, supposed to be temporary and we interpret that to mean they have to be temporary, they have to sunset within five years and try to hue to that. And I don't see an option here that would basically preserve the current process that we have. That would potentially approve trailers with and hearing approval, like we currently do for many users. But remove the requirement that it be temporary and that it's sunset. Was that something you had considered to basically just take the temporary tag off of trailers, but otherwise keep our existing process in place? We hadn't, but again, these were only thoughts of staff and I think, you know, personally, I think that that could also work for this type of use. OK, so that's one thought. The other question I had was, what was the thinking behind? I think the thing that threw me the most was on the slide for option B, where it shows approval for two years or storage not visible from the public right of way in private commercial and academic schools. But then you would allow approval with no time limit for restaurants, retail, and public academic schools. I guess I could understand why you might want storage trailers to be temporary, but I didn't, I was sort of thrown by the proposal for private commercial and academic schools to be two years when restaurants and retail are no time limit as our public academic schools. The private, commercial and academic schools are there is a more constrained time period when they're operating. They only attract a certain group of people. It's not as publicly engaging necessarily than a restaurant or retail shopping establishment. I understand you're considering what that distinction would be between the public and private. And the thought is the it is a city function managing the school properties assessing their use assessing the impacts and that could be something that the city would be able to responsibly manage. Okay, other questions for staff? Let me go to Ms. McMahon and then Ms. Laugh. Thanks, my first question. In your conversations with other jurisdictions, I'm curious if you heard anything about their how their solution responds to the balance and interests between what feels like a temporary space solution and what would be a more permanent space solution like building a building or expanding a building. And I ask because that's often something that comes up when we see these. We ask ourselves in the applicant, like, why are you choosing this instead of investing more in your space, that kind of thing. So I'm curious if you heard, especially given that what you, the way that you summarize what you saw with other jurisdictions is that by and large, they're treating these as permanent structures anyway and they're not asking them to sunset. It seems like they have less of a concern with them being temporary or looking temporary or somehow preventing a more permanent investment in the community. So I'm curious if you had conversations on those lines. It actually had not come up in the conversations that concern. In the few conversations we had with the individuals in those. Perhaps there are others in their departments we can discuss further with them, but that initially it did not come up. Okay, a little surprised. And you already asked my question about public versus private. So the other one I had is in your option B, so option A is basically a by right process. Option B is an administrative SUP, and we've experienced with transitioning several types of formerly full hearing SUPs to administrative process based on years of experience and sort of no controversy. I'm curious what you see the admin SUP review covering in this instance, that the building fire health code review under a by-right process wouldn't be covering. There are what you could do is go into more detail on into deeper into impacts that a building code might cover, such as I'm thinking of property maintenance. That is defined in the city code, those types of considerations. It does apply to a broad range of uses. Perhaps a condition could delve more deeply into trailer maintenance, trailer upkeep, surrounding litter conditions. We have that that applies to SUPs. So that could be, those could be some of the items. There could be hours of operation, of course, just as we have done with other uses, if land use impacts are thought to be an issue. And those are some initial thoughts. And so those are all things you staff could improvise on in the administrative review, but have it still be retained as an administrative SUP process. That's right. submit proposals for an administrative process, outline the standard conditions that would apply, and you would review them, make a recommendation to City Council, and their purported approval would is like a blanket approval. Thank you for that. I'm going to fill it up to you for... Right, blanket approval for all. Okay, for. Commissioner McMan, you used the word to know of, I'll delegate it to you for right. Link at approval for all. Okay, for commissioner. Mick, man, you used a word to know. I was sent it went out of my head that it made it sound like we would tailor our conditions. Yeah, it sounded. It's, yeah, improvised was improvised. I think, yes, and of course, Christina may have. Oh, yours are really. Yeah. But flinched perhaps. But I think what Ms. Horowitz was clarifying was that we would have a set of standard conditions that we would apply. And so there wouldn't be a lot of improvisation. OK. But those standard conditions would cover. So they would change the application to application, but they would cover issues that would be a little beyond what the building code and maintenance etc. Okay thank you thank you for that clarification appreciate that. All right. Ms. Long. Okay first of all there's one true temporary trailer that's not listed anywhere on here and I just want to be certain everyone realizes this. Construction site, temporary trailers are a by right use. And those are truly the only temporary trailers we have because they have a start date, they have an in date. They start when the project starts and they go away when it's built. And so we honestly have no other temporary trailers in this city. And I really have an issue with option B because when you say approval with no time limit and you start looking at restaurants, retail shopping, academic schools, one academic schools impact the neighborhood that they're in. And I can tell you there are two counties here that temporary trailers have been on the same site for 15 years. That's not temporary. That needs to have a building and that's plenty of time to get funding, design, and construction of the building. That's one issue. When you put trailers, we basically the DHL trailer was sitting in the parking lot of Fox Chase Shopping Center. We asked that away why, because Fox Chase Shopping Center had three retail spaces that were vacant. So trailers impact the vacancy rates. And then when you look at restaurants, when we have coming up next month, I was having breakfast at another place down the street and saw this trailer operating in a driveway. Well guess what? They're impacting the owners. All up and down Mount Vernon Avenue who have substantial overhead because they have bricks and mortar, they have numbers of employees, and they're opening early in the morning closing late at night. So when you approve those with no time limit, you're impacting the economic fabric of the city. So I have some real problems with option B and just going through administrative approval. I think A has some merits, but I still think that by rights with restaurants, I'm really not in favor of it. Or, you know, it's a really slick slope that we're going down. And right now there's a food truck that's operating as a temporary trailer. It's been in the same spot in a parking lot since May. It has not moved. I don't even know if it can move. But they operate every day in that same spot. So guess what? What else is that impacting? What are the restaurants in the area? Perhaps one thing that occurs to me as you're raising the question about, say a temporary trailer that's in an alleyway or is I'm suspecting that I think we should look to see if those jurisdictions that are regulating these as actually permanent structures that have a that are just anticipated to be temporary. If they I feel like trailers can be located in spots that maybe a permanent building cannot like an alleyway and perhaps there is a distinction that they're making that limit the locations of these when they're regulated as a permanent building. So that may be something that we could look in a little bit more for you. Just to clarify, pick you back on a question, she had their... So this would not affect food trucks, right? If it's a motorized vehicle, this is not affected. This is a trailer that does not have a motor, is what we're talking about here. That's correct. But I think if a food truck doesn't move, as a motor, it's different. It's legally, it's different. It's legally different, but somewhere other parking, I mean that if you look up Webster's definition of a food truck, it moves from place to place, it doesn't sit in one place for six months. We... I am not conscious of an example of a movable food truck that has been parked in the same spot. Yeah. But I'm... I drive by it. I expected that you would have one. So that is one thing that we can... I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. I'm not sure if it's a lot of work. A couple of questions for you. Let's look at the second bullet first. Commercial zone locations. Would that include the first floor of a CRMU-Zoned mixed use like an apartment with retail on the first floor? In that type of zone, you're saying where there could be adjacent retail or restaurant on the first floor. And yes, yes. That's what this idea is. Certainly to Mr. Moritz's point, there could be different zones you might want to consider. Maybe you want to, for example, exclude the CRM use, but just all up for discussion. So now let me give you a hypothetical to think of in light of the third bullet, which talks about being subject to zoning ordinance approval regulations. Let's say that you have a building, so let's say in a commercial zone that has been approved and it meets all of the setback and height requirements but was a little shy on the open space requirement but we gave it approval anyway. Okay. Now if that building, you know, it's up and operating, and then they ask for a trailer, or it's a buy-write trailer, would you look to see whether or not this was further impinging on the open space? Is that what you would be looking for? That would be one thing to look at. Any of the requirements in the zone, there would be FAR. This would be if these are permanent, again. FAR, open space. And setback, I think is whether or not there are often aren't. Right, in commercial zones. There are often are commercial zones setbacks. So any of those types of requirements, parking would be, if it took up parking spaces that were required parking spaces, we would evaluate that too. Yeah, I can imagine that issue coming up with regard to the DHL trailer, if in fact, the parking that was provided in that shopping center was below the minimum required, then we would be further reducing the parking and that would have to be taken into account, right? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Would there be any sort of limit in terms of the number of trailers that a parcel could have been given to the parking? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, thank you. Would there be any sort of limit in terms of the number of trailers that a parcel could have? And what we're talking about here or in the existing zoning ordinance regulations? That, there aren't any in the existing zoning regulations. But I imagine there could be something added, particularly in the case of an administrative SUV, that could be one of the standard conditions requirements criteria. Ms. Laal. Just to follow on to you, if it's an owner, I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm just going to say that I'm I mean you can set up LLCs all day Well, unless you're talking about the parcel and not the trailer ownership. I was talking about the land parcel. Oh, okay That's ultimately what we're regulating not not the who but the what Well, I'll throw a couple thoughts on the table here. And I appreciate staffs chewing on this. I think this is an interesting little sightline for us. Given the volume we've seen of these in recent years, so I appreciate the research that's been done regarding neighboring counties and to try to provide some proposals for us. My inclination would be of these probably to lean towards the admin SUP, which is probably a good compromise to start for, you know, we have the full SUP process at the moment. I'd be comfortable moving away from that, but I'm not sure that I would be comfortable with a full by right permission, because there are certain controls that you have through an S&P process. It creates some requirements that I think give a little bit more control over the use, which is important. I'm not particularly concerned with the term, whether we go with approval for two years or approval with no time limits as long as the externalities are mitigated. I do agree with the limit on storage, just plain old storage. So I think that that is something that should be limited. I think we would want to have different standards for a trailer that is passively being stored versus one that's providing an active use for occupancy by either the customers or by the food vendors or whoever's inside the trailer. So I would distinguish that with the standards that we develop personally. For the approval with no tame limit, maybe there's a compromise there where there's a five or 10 year time limit on it and then there's a need to renew so it's not an indefinite approval. I think the trailers that we have to be careful of is that they're not fixed buildings that tend to be appreciating assets. They're depreciating assets. They're like cars or anything else. It's kind of a consumer grid that tends to wear out and wear down as it gets older. So I would want to have some control over the long term use by probably putting a limit on it. I wouldn't say that you couldn't come up for renewal in five or 10 years. If your trailer were in good shape and you were replacing your trailer or whatever, you had a good plan for it. But I think that that sort of control on these sorts of things would be important. And would want to see some sort of, especially for an admin SUP, I think I would limit the number of trailers that would be permitted on a single parcel to one or two, or maybe you just determine it based on the size of the lot somehow, because there could be a little bit different at a large shopping center versus a small lot that's, you know, say an old town or Delray size lot, where something like this could be done if on a smaller lot. And challenge us to come up with some new standards and see how they work out. Not try to prescribe limitations to the nth degree here, which is off of our inclination in Alexandria. It'll just make it as hard as possible to do this so that nobody really wants to do it. And I think what we're saying here is we're willing to be a little bit more flexible. So I think in that vein, we should air towards providing some room for flexibility and creativity and then adjusting the policy as needed. So I would say make it more flexible and tighten it up later as opposed to making it inflexible and making it something that we have to loosen up later. And let's just see how it works. Because I think we always assume the worst case scenario with these things, but we always have the good, you know, for some reason we're overrun with trailers, applications, we can come back in two months in our year or whatever and change it if we need to. So I would, you know, I don't know, I would stake that out as my own personal take on this and I'm sure we all have opinions on this as well as allow. Well, and I do because most temporary trailers seemed to end up on the West End. So what I'm gonna say is that no time limit for me is a non-starter. I think five years max, anything past five years starts to become a permanent structure and people get used to it. And, you know, the administrative issue, he is fine. However, when you have schools, you're going to empath neighborhoods. And there needs to be a process in place for that. Just on that, can I interject a second with a question? Can you just clarify what our current process is for public academic schools? Because I thought I heard you say that those already are permitted on an administrative process and there's the limit time limit is five years. Okay. They're limited. And I think we put a five-year time limit. And I would say no more than one per site because even if you have a shopping center, what if you have four retail spaces open and you're proving two trailers for that shopping center? What does that do to the owner of that shopping center? And I'd suggest talking with ADP on this as well. Wouldn't it be the owner applying for the temporary trailer? Not always. In the case of DHL they applied for. But with the occurrence of the shopping center. Right. But because the shopping center only had that. They weren't an only space. Yeah, I think the shopping center would, the landowner is always gonna have some party to this, though, based on the fact that they've got to sign off on this to be allowed on their land. The one other thing that I would note with respect to the one trailer limit would be I might propose an exception for public academic schools on that front because when they do the learning cottage things, sometimes those are two and three classrooms. So that would be an exception where it would potentially be acceptable to have more than one. So just thinking of some alternate circumstances here as we're sitting here. Ms. McAnne. So some thoughts. I feel maybe I'm leaning in the other direction of this spectrum so far. In as much as I would say, the features of your option A by right option make a lot of sense to me as covering most of the bases. I really appreciate your clarification per I think Commissioner Brown's line of questioning that any uses to be approved by right in a trailer at this location and I presume a by-right option would include us having to specify like number of trailers we would say certain numbers on a based on some land use classification would be what we're approving by right but But they have to abide by the zone. And so they have to be subject to the FAR Open Space Parking and other requirements so they can't by being by right approvals somehow undermine everything that we've gone through to approve a prior project for that location. But that said, I do feel a bit of back to my initial line of questioning, and I wish we had some feedback from other jurisdictions, the sense that a trailer is not a full investment in a site. And so I feel like while we might, it probably behooves us to remove the word temporary from the distinction because it's not that short term we're talking about. Nonetheless, I think generally what I've heard up here, and when we think about the purpose of this kind of device on a site, it's not to fill a super long term solution. It's to experiment, it's to try something before maybe they try something else. And I think that keeping some kind of, I don't know if it's a five-year time limit or it's a 10-year time limit, but some kind of time limit on it, but also some of these other, some of the layers that the administrative SUP solution could offer by way of expectations without being that much more layer than what the by-right solution would have. To your observation, Commissioner Lyall, about the West End, always ending up with all the trailers. It's an interesting one, because I feel like, I don't know if it's a chicken and egg thing, because we also struggle with the West End not like getting the project proposals that we want and people telling us they can't pencil certain types of projects we'd like to see on the West End because of market conditions. And I wonder if some of the reason why more temporary trailer solutions for things appear there is in part because they're trying to bridge that gap and what they can get investment in. But I don't think it makes sense. Like I don't want to create a process by which the West End gets a bunch of trailers and no investment, which is why I lean toward the administrative SUP with a much more reasonable set of time frames and a broader grouping of stuff. So I tend to concur a storage use having a shorter time window over approval makes sense because it really ought to be solved in another way. I think private commercial and academic schools should be treated like the rest of the stuff. I really don't see why it has to have a shorter time distinction. And I tend to feel if we have to put a time limit on them, 10 years could be sufficient. But if the rest of the commission wants to go with a tighter timeline, I'm OK with that as well. And I also wanted to mention the food trucks one last time before me giving having some time to hear some other commissioners. I do think there is an important distinction between food truck activity, which is also in my mind. The similarity is there are interim solutions trying out a solution to a problem or a market desire. The key distinction is they operate on the public right of way primarily. And that's how we regulate, like other than health regulations, we're looking at them as something that gets the right to be in the public right of way, whereas the trailers are on private property. And so if a property owner, say a restaurant, wants to have a trailer as part of their restaurant, it's not a competing business, it's their own business. It might be another niche of their business, but they've got the property, and they're looking at experimenting with that other niche. We frankly kind of, that's sort of how some of the restaurants along Mount Vernon Avenue have expanded their offerings, right? They've created not with through trailers, but through purgulas and stuff and extra signage. They've created new brands. And so I think it's important to, the food truck is typically an independent operator who doesn't have land. And they're looking for a legal place to bend their wares to try things out to see if they can start a business. And we do need to find good solutions for that in our space. But when it's private space, I think we need to give them a little more leeway to use their spaces in ways that are consistent with zoning. Other comments? Just a question. Whether we would consider, I am definitely leaning towards the five year cap without possibility of renewal. My sentiment on that one is simply that the feel of trailers for the most part is the temporary use. It is like we've been describing here more of an experimental platform. It is a temporary structure beyond that. It seems like there's a better possibility to look at a more permanent solution for whatever idea it was that they wanted to establish. And also for the by-right versus getting an administrative special use permit, I assume and I think that with this administrative special use permit the city at least can start to see patterns of where trailers are and start to notice that kind of density build up. So we don't end up with congestion of trailers in any one area. The other part of the trailer use though that I think we have to consider is just the maintenance and you know the impact of these trailers on the land that they're on. They're not necessarily tied into our permanent infrastructure. They're servicing, the servicing for the trailers can sometimes bring a lot more traffic to the sites where they're stationed. That can have a negative impact on the land itself may get less, you know Palatable for later development just something to consider than that you know, then that's why also I'm I'm for that five-year cap at max Your comments Mr. Chairman just a couple observations. And I think there's an awful lot of complexity this process, and I don't really have strong feelings about the details of the process, but of the things that have been discussed, I think that your point about considering these trailers making the differentiation that they're not a permanent asset, that they're not architecture, that they're not long-term facilities, that they are kind of depreciating device is salient for me. And I think we need to have. And that makes me very open to the idea of the five-year limit, and even Commissioner Ramirez point about five years without a renewal. Because I think that would have the advantage of it isn't something that we're micromanaging every six months or every year but it confronts the person who gets the business that gets the proposal with the fact that's the wind they've got. So that question of does the transition to bricks and mortar as Commissioner Lyle had mentioned that's plenty of a time frame to figure out how to make that work either the business is going to grow out of the trailer and rent a leasehold in the shopping center, or it's going to stop and do something else at the end. So I think the clarity of that is pretty good, both in terms of providing simplification to the overall process. I think embedding that potentially an administrative SUP process as all the advantages that we've talked about that it's more staff eyes on the process and evaluation of the criteria than the by-ride option would be but it's still not coming to the full to the full hearing. Thanks other comments? Just to all just said one last comment. With respect to the discussion of whether or not a renewal should be permitted. I personally, I just disagree with handcuffing ourselves by saying it can't be renewed. I think people will figure out ways around it, thinking buy a new trailer and come back and say, oh, it's a new trailer now. So give us another 10 years or another five years or whatever with a different vehicle. Or they could find somewhere else to operate it, which is in this city easier said than done. But I think there's ways that we may end up with some really cool business that operates out of a trailer and want the ability for it to continue to operate in that fashion and if we say there's no extension of that then that handcuffs us. I also wonder if City Council could be handcuffed in that way. Like, wouldn't that be one City Council? Because ultimately these are approved under the auspices of city council, but wouldn't that be one city council handcuffing a future city council in terms of if it wanted to allow an operation to continue in the future? That would be my, I don't know, I just feel like there's no need for that. And I understand the arguments that others have made about that sort of pushes people to move into a permanent space. But, you know, not everything that happens in a trailer is destined for brick and mortar. And I think we're better just to keep it flexible in terms you will be able to do. Or so. Any other comments on it? We've probably given you a lot to chew on. I don't know if you'll be able to make As your Tales of all the feedback here. I wish you well with that. Is there a timetable here in terms of when we might see. Presumably this comes back as some sort of. Next amendment. And then. Are you soliciting similar feedback from city council before a Text Amendment proposal will come forward or. What's next. Um. and then are you soliciting similar feedback from City Council before a text amendment proposal will come forward or What's next Well I'll see if Miss Norwood has a timetable in mind. I do think that Some summary of what we learned today and sort of not not so much in an options format But in a summary of things we heard, and that we might circulate that to council as an invitation for them to individually weigh in with thoughts so that we have some clarity about the reception that our proposal will receive. and in 2025 perhaps second quarter, third quarter of next, well obviously 2025, we were going to look at another amendment to the commercial uses and perhaps this could be wrapped into that too. Okay, so generally speaking we're looking out approximately six months or so until this comes back at the earliest. Right. Great. Well thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We'll call our only development case of the evening item number three. Item number three, development special use permit 2024-0, I'm sorry, 2024-1006, 5725 and 5755 Duke Street public hearing and consideration of a request for a development special use permit and site plan to connect 110 residential townhouse buildings including a special use permit to allow for more than eight dwelling units in a single townhouse structure zone CDD number 29 applicants, FAM Metro Hounds, F West and LLC represented by Ken Wire, our GIL. Okay, thank you very much. Do we have an interest in a staff presentation on this item this evening? Okay, hearing none, we'll further presentation. I presume Mr. Caning is okay with no presentations and see I stepped out of the room voluntarily. Do we have any questions for staff about the item? We have one speaker on the item. So Ken Weyer on behalf of the applicant. Good evening Mr. Chairman, members of Planning Commission Ken Weyer, my clients of Van Mirers I'm going to go to the office. I'm going to go to the office. Ken wire on behalf of the applicant. Good evening, Mr Chairman, members of Planning Commission. Ken wire, my clients, vanmiers with me this evening, Denise Herover and Nick Whitehouse. I do want to take a minute to thank staff. We get to hearing and no one's here. We want to go quickly. I'm not going to hold you up. and we're delivering townhouses. It was pretty simple to figure out the perimeter alignment, but the interior layout took a lot of work. It's engineering teams, it's turning movements, it's fire trucks, and I think we're quite happy where we are. And I always like to note when we're in complete agreement with staff. That doesn't happen all the time, but we try to get there. So on behalf of Van Miribra, please to be here. We look forward for your recommendation of approval. Thank you and as we've learned with Potomac Yard that can change over time as the Future blocks get developed and then people start to have opinions about move to the next room So we'll see if you can keep up the streak or not Let's see we're gonna miss but be in the mr. Brown. Well, I'll make a motion to close the whole hearing Second motion to close the public hearing in a second. All those in favor. Please say aye Any opposed motion carries 7 0 oh Miss Ramirez let me sorry let me let me yeah before we get too far down the road here. Let me go let me go to you next sorry Okay, do you want to step away from the dius then on that one? Okay, so miss miss Ramirez is So I should have caught that at the beginning of this for her to workuse herself. So she's stepping away from the dice for that. Mr. Brown. Uh, Mr. R, I just wanted to clarify that while you may think that you are the first development proposal tonight, this doesn't change the record. This is the last development proposal tonight. I'll take those. Thank you. I have that. Yeah, Ms. McMahon. I'll take those. Thank you. I have it. Yeah, Ms. McMahon. I just actually kind of maybe I'll jump off where Mr. Wire left off, which is to say that I think there's a lot of town homes on these two blocks. And I live in a town home development, so it was pretty interesting looking at how the problem of fitting these in was solved in this design. And I did have discussion with staff about the theory behind the open space design and my appreciation that it's all publicly accessible open space. At the same time, acknowledging that it's not likely that random members of the public are going to find their way into these into every little crevice of open space here and use it maximally but it's important to set the groundwork that permeability and public passageway through is allowed in a neighborhood like this. So I'm really glad that that's sort of in here. And I do also appreciate the clarification staff gave me on how the open space design relates to the transit station area. And again, I just think it's a good package and a great jumping off point for the activities that are going to continue in the development of this larger neighborhood. So thank you very much for the proposal, and I'll be supporting it. Ms. Lyle. I just want to say thank you for all of the work with the community over the last few years. It's been significant. I don't think anyone realizes how many community meetings have gone into various phases of this development. But I know my own Robert and Maggie do and you guys do and it is so great with the Nova Ground breaking yesterday and then now seeing this start to come to fruition something that we've been working on for 21 years is is actually real. So, very happy to see it. And thank you for your work. And we look forward to the construction meeting in a few months down the road. And I'm happy to make a motion whenever we're ready. We may be ready for that at this point if you'd like to. Chair Macy, can you just repeat the vote on closing the public hearing? I'm not sure that Commissioner Codenick was back. Where's that? He's in the room. Did you vote, yeah. Can we vote to close the public hearing? Certainly. Okay. So we should clarify that that vote was 6-0 with one recusal on that one. Okay, so I'll make a motion to approve special use permit. 2024 100006 West End blocks L2 and M. Second. Okay, good emotion by Ms. Lael, second by Ms. Mugan. I'll offer a couple comments here. Actually, I have a question for staff first. We did get a letter from Yimmy's in Northern Virginia and they made a statement in their letter. We want to note that the only reason that this development requires a special use permit is so it can build nine townhouses in a row instead of eight. So I think that's technically true, but this still would have required this sort of approval process and a hearing because that's for the SUP that allows the nine stick, as opposed to the eight stick of townhouses, you would still under our current development standards require the, everything we're doing here for the development special use permit. They're both SUPs, but there are two different types of SUPs and do we have that correct there? Yes, that is correct.U.P.'s, but there are two different types of S.U.P.'s, and do we have that correct there? Yes, that is correct. Okay, so as a technical matter, even if they were sticking to the letter of the law and only had eight stick of townhouses, we'd still be here doing this hearing, given our current development approval process. Yes, we would. Okay, Thank you. Helpful to clarify that. Just so it's a little bit of a nuance, but it's helpful for people to understand that wrinkle. And I'll add my comments. Thank you for this development. This is great to see this first residential approval in the West End area of the city. Along with Ms. Lyle, I was at the groundbreaking yesterday for the, you know, the hospital. And so, you know, got to be on the grounds there for the first time in, you know, I guess since I'm all closed, personally. So it was neat to see everything coming together, street grid and other features on that site. So this will be another significant development there and please support this this evening. Any other discussion on this item? Okay, if not, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries six zero with one recusal. Thank you. And then that'll take us to our Commissioner's reports, comments and questions. Do we have any on the... Chair May Sikmay asked just a quick question and it relates to Commissioner Ramirez so I can wait until she comes back up. I did just want to clarify that there was the recusal and the reason for the recusal so just to have it on the record So if Commissioner Ramirez if you wouldn't mind stating the reason the the basis of your recusal Absolutely, so one of the parties of ownership for the land lots that we were reviewing this evening Is doing business with somebody in my family. So that's why Thank you. Thank for clarifying any commissioner reports comments or questions As well, I will just say that we have a West end advisory group. I couldn't I can't ever remember the name of what we actually are calling it now. October 24th, I think, and we have two new projects coming in. It's still the IZNR Westland Mark van Dorn implementation. It's almost the longest implementation. We have. Yes. is almost the longest implementation. We have, but yes. Pay Carl the big bucks to keep track of what all these groups are. That's the only one in the city. Thank you for that update, anything else? We did at our last waterfront commission meeting received an update on the proposal for Robinson Terminal North and some of which proceeding there. So that's an exciting proposal that I think benefited from some feedback from the Waterfront Commission and will be coming. The current schedule phone calls for that to come forward for development approval from recommendation from Planning Commission in final approval by City Council before the end of the year. So, the good news about that project is it is fairly well in line with what the small area plan calls for, but also adjusting to reflect some of the market realities of some of the contaminants and other features of that site that were discovered and scuttle the previous development proposal. But I think that they've, you know, we'll reserve final judgment and tell our public hearing, but from what I've seen, it will be a proposal that's well received by the Planning Commission in a few months. Mr. Kenney? Mr. Chairman, I don't have a report, but your report on the waterfront reminded me of a question that I have, which is, is there a DSUP in the pipeline for pumping station at Waterfront Park on Prince Street? So that it depends on, I mean, what approvals are necessary depends on the ultimate dimensions. It is likely under the current ordinance that it requires a, it may require a site plan, it may require a special use permit depending on size. It absolutely would go to the BAR. But it's still a while until it's clear what's going to be required. And actually, I didn't mean to be so specific about the process, but there is a project to design a pump station that would be in that general location on the water. There is. And I do believe in Chair Macyk, the Waterfront Commission has received some presentations on this subject. Yeah, so we've advised that process through a committee about a year or so ago at that committee wrapped up its work. And now that the city has a progressive design build contractor who is refining those proposals, they're providing updates to the commission, there was a presentation deck that they sent to us as a commission, we didn't discuss it, that they sent it to us, which has the latest on what they're thinking here. And I think I could work with Miss Williams to get that to. Yeah, I'll make sure, I mean, it may be on the website, but regardless, we'll make sure that. Almost definitely is to get some of that on the website, but yeah, I think we could forward that to you. So that has the full details of the waterfront plan implementation project. Notice I didn't say flood mitigation because while that is a substantial portion of the cost of that project that capital project as it's defined is also intended to cover restoration of the recreational elements of the parks that it affects and is very important to finishing the waterfront so and every turn the waterfront committee or the waterfront commission is trying to remind everyone to You know keep your eye on the ball here the reason we're doing this is to implement the waterfront plan not just mitigate flooding Although that's an important piece of what it does Well, thank you. I'd be very interested to see that. So thanks for the update. Okay, anything else in the way of updates? Ms. Ramirez. One small update. You may have noticed that the mini-howard high school building is up and running, and the other site is kind of gone and not running. That's the start of all of geothermal work that they're going to be starting on the other site there. So, moving on along. In looking ahead to the next school project, Mr. Canig is our delegate to the George Mason Advisory Panel. So have you started meetings with that yet? Have they started meeting? Yes, in fact, I think I've reported at the last hearing that we had just had our first meeting. And our second meeting was scheduled for tomorrow night, but we just got noticed today there's been postpone for administrative reasons. But that probably- I don't only guess what capital project those people are dealing with at the moment. So I think in all way they post-ponded. Yeah, right. So, but the neighborhood is fully engaged and there's already been a very informed and detailed flow of perspective from the community around the school into ACPS in response to the public presentation that was made the night before our first meeting last month. And it's on a very fast track. One of the challenges is we were presented with three concept layouts at the very first meeting that we convened. And the expectation was that at this one we were going to have tomorrow night, the advisory group would weigh in on which of those options to pursue, which is sort of rocket paste for those of us who don't absorb things without taking a certain amount of time. And that's part of the feedback that we've been getting so far. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes and certainly getting the project moving and completed in the time frame that works for the larger community and the school system is important, but it's also as all these projects are a very complex site-specific set of relationships between the scale of the building, the existing building, the park that's adjacent to the school and the neighborhood context. And that whole process is fully activated as of day one, which is great. Yeah, no thanks for that update. I appreciate that. Anything else people have in the way of reports this evening? If not, that'll take us in a minute from our September 5th meeting. We have a motion to approve. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from September 5, 2024, planning commission meeting. Second. Okay, a motion by Ms. McMahon, a second by Ms. Lyle, approved minutes from September 15th. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any post? Motion carries. And if there are no further announcements, that will take us to. Make a motion to adjourn. Second. We have a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by Ms. McMahon. Seconded by Ms. Lyle. I was in favor please say aye. I opposed motion carries. We adjourn. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.