It’s not as high profile as Clemente Development Company’s The View development planned for the Spring Hill Metro area, but the nearby Evolution development could be exciting for affordable housing advocates.
According to the application overview, the building would include 1,400 multi-family units in a high-rise building. All of the housing in the building would be workforce dwelling units — defined by Fairfax County as housing affordable to people making from 70 to 100 percent of the area median income.
The contact phone number listed for the project is inactive, but the housing is likely part of a requirement from Fairfax County that residential developments set aside 14 percent of units in a residential development as affordable, or 16 percent if the units are being constructed off-site.
According to Fairfax County Public School documents, the new building could add as many as 157 students to Spring Hill Elementary School.
Details on the project are still scarce. The application was submitted in late 2017, but staff at Fairfax County Planning and Zoning say little progress has been made since then, as the developer remains mostly focused on The View.
Photo via Fairfax County Planning and Zoning
A burst pipe has closed a handful of stores in Tysons Corner Center mall.
Around 11 a.m., water spilled into stores in the Nordstrom wing of the mall. The Aveda and White House Black Market both faced substantial water accumulation and were evacuated.
Frozen pipes, and subsequent bursts, are a common hazard of sudden temperature drops.
Janitorial staff are currently on scene cleaning the flooded areas, but an employee at Aveda said there store is likely to be closed for the remainder of the day. The damage to the stores has not yet been determined.
At one point, a delivery person came along with boxes of merchandise and asked whether or not to drop it off inside. The employee shrugged and pointed to the flooded store.
It’s extremely cold outside, and the Fairfax County Animal Shelter has some advice for pet owners over the news few days of the Polar Vortex.
One of the most urgent warnings is to keep animals away from all of the types of dangerous chemicals that might be around to try to deal with the snow.
According to the shelter:
– If it’s too cold outside for you, it’s probably too cold for your pets, too. Pets left outside in frigid temperatures can freeze or wander away due to disorientation. Please bring your pets indoors!
– For free-roaming community cats, you can provide straw-filled shelters to give them a protected place to get warm.
– After walks, make sure to towel dry your dog, and wipe their paws and in between their toes to remove ice, snow, and salt. Keep antifreeze away from all animals!
If a pet is found outside in frigid temperatures, Animal Protection Police can be contacted at 703-691-2131.
As cold weather sets in, Fairfax County Animal Control urged residents to be mindful of warm areas around their house that wild animals can seek shelter in. Sgt. Alena Swartz, Animal Control Officer for Fairfax County, said conflicts can happen when wild animals come too close to homes.
While the types of animals are unlikely to change, Swartz noted that residents are still likely to see foxes, raccoons or coyotes throughout the winter.
Courtesy photo
(Updated 2 p.m.) Police are still looking for two men who broke into a home in the Courthouse Station neighborhood in Tysons around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday (Jan. 29).
According to a crime report:
The victim was at home when he heard several loud noises followed by glass breaking. The victim remained in an upstairs bedroom and saw two males running from his home just prior to police arrival. One was described as wearing a black fleece, black pants and a grey cap.
According to the report, an investigation after the fact revealed that several items of jewelry had been stolen.
Photos via Google Maps
As Tysons grows, it’s going to need access to medical care.
The Reston Hospital Center has an application, initially filed in late 2017 and still listed as “under staff review,” to build a freestanding emergency department at 2000 Old Gallows Road in Tysons.
“As Tysons continues to develop with additional office buildings and homes, it is essential that convenient and accessible health care services are available to meet the increasing need,” Reston Hospital Center, LLC, wrote in the application.
The emergency department would be located southwest of the Leesburg Pike-Beltway interchange. The proposed site is a triangular lot that closely abuts a residential development, which presents a number of development challenges.
The site is currently overgrown with foliage but was approved in 2002 to be developed as a drive-through bank. The application indicates that while the hospital would have a larger floor area, it would generate less peak hour and daily vehicle traffic than the drive-through bank.
“It will provide hospital-level emergency care in a convenient and accessible location and will be operated 24 hours per day,” according to the application. “Despite its capabilities and accessibility, the [freestanding emergency department] will accommodate far less patients than a typical emergency department operating within a hospital, allowing patients to receive necessary treatment quickly and efficiently.”
Though the facility would operate for 24-hours per day, patients would not stay overnight. The application notes that patients admitted to the building would be treated and discharged within hours of their admission or would be transferred to a hospital for higher levels of care.
HCA, Inc., which owns the Reston Hospital Center, operates a number of freestanding emergency departments across the country.
The application says that most patients visit these types of freestanding emergency departments between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. and that an average of two patients are transported to the facilities via ambulance per day.
The growing need for emergency services in Tysons also prompted plans for a new fire station in Tysons East.
Image via Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning
One of the “guiding principals” of the Tysons Comprehensive Plan is a reduction of surface parking and moving vehicles through Tysons to drive pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
But at Bisnow’s Tysons State of the Market event last week, local developers said that utopian plan isn’t really shaping up the way it’s designed.
Brian Tucker, managing director for JLL, said changes in how space is filled in office developments has impacted local parking more than the comprehensive plan accounted for.
Despite ridership of the Metro increasing in Tysons, Tucker said parking supplied by new developments isn’t keeping pace with the demand for parking. According to Tucker:
“There was a time going back when we couldn’t give parking away. With the coming of the Metro, we all assumed things were going to continue on that trend. But it didn’t turn out that way. As buildings got developed, there were changes in terms of how people used their space. Floors became much more dense, and we had 30 percent more people on a floor than we had years ago.”
If you’ve found it difficult to find parking in Tysons, that’s by design. Where many localities have parking minimums for development, in Tysons, offices located near Metro stations have parking maximums. According to the plan:
“Office uses located between 1/8 and 1/4 mile of a station have a maximum parking ratio of 2.0 spaces per 1,000 square feet of office, while those located between 1/4 and 1/2 mile have a ratio of 2.2 per 1,000.”
The comprehensive plan lists a number of strategies to wean Tysonians off their cars — including adding transit infrastructure and encouraging teleworking — but the plan also calls for a reduction over time in the ratio of parking spaces to the commercial floor area.
A chart in the comprehensive plan shows a scale of vehicle trip reduction goals connected to the amount of gross square feet of development in Tysons.
According to the plan:
In the past, each development was required to provide parking for its own peak demand, an approach that often leads to excess parking supply and a wasted uses of resources. In 2015, the Tysons Parking Study estimated that Tysons had 110,000 parking spaces. This amount of parking far exceeds what is necessary.
The comprehensive plan calls for parking in Tysons not to be supplied for individual use but regarded as a common resource for multiple uses.
But Tucker says those maximums are concerning to real estate developers.
“Real estate people would say ‘we know Metro is here and all the millennials are supposed to take it, but we’re scared to death [of limited parking],'” said Tucker. “We need a mechanism to bridge us to the date when people actually will be taking the Metro by allowing people the opportunity to park and wean people off of their car.”
Donna Schafer, managing director for Cityline Partners, said the vision of a car-free Tysons is going to take time to implement and more flexibility should be offered to offer temporary parking options, like “throwaway parking decks.” According to the Tysons Annual Report, a 711-space interim commuter lot was built in 2014. A stury of this lot in 2018 found that 558 of the spaces were filled on an average weekday.
Mark Carrol, executive vice president of Skanska Commercial Development, said driving around Tysons is part of the area’s DNA.
“The accessibility by car was part of the initial appeal,” said Carrol. “Some of the planning that went into place to try to change that, but it feels like we’re at the stage in Tysons where the behavior hasn’t changed.”
(Updated 2:35 p.m.) It’s been a month of meetings and votes for the state legislature, but it hasn’t brought much in the way of success for Tysons’ representatives in Richmond.
Most of the local legislative delegation’s high profile bills, like a plastic bag tax and new gun control legislation, were killed in committees.
Sen. Barbara Favola’s (D-31st District) bill prohibiting prospective employers from requiring employees disclose their wage or salary history, or attempting to obtain wage and salary histories, was defeated on Jan. 14 in the Commerce and Labor committee on a 4-10 vote.
Another bill from Favola authorized people licensed to practice medicine to provide care to patients inside Virginia via telemedicine services. The bill was incorporated on Jan. 24 into a separate bill, which cleared the Finance committee yesterday (Tuesday).
Sen. Chap Petersen’s (D-34th District) bill that would have imposed a five-cent per bag tax on plastic bags to support the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan was defeated in the Finance committee on a 5-11 vote.
But Petersen’s bill requiring public higher education institutions to gather public comments before raising tuition or imposing mandatory fees is doing well. The bill was unanimously approved in the Education and Health committee and incorporated five other bills before being referred to the Finance committee.
Petersen’s bill prohibiting any political candidates from soliciting or accepting contributions from public service corporations and a bill prohibiting individuals from making contributions over $10,000 to any state election were both killed in the Privileges and Elections committee.
Sen. Janet Howell’s (D-32nd District) bill authorizing evidence of prior statements that are inconsistent with later court testimony was passed by indefinitely — which almost always means it was killed — in the Courts of Justice committee on Jan. 23.
So far, three of Del. Mark Keam’s (D-35th District) bills of 15 drafted have passed the House and are awaiting Senate action. One would prohibit auto insurance companies from refusing to issue or renew a policy based on the foster care status of the policyholder or their family.
Little progress was made on gun control measures by local legislators.
Del. Rip Sullivan (D-48th District) had introduced a bill allowing police or prosecutors to request a two-week ban on buying or owning a gun if they believe there is a “substantial risk of injury to himself or others.” The bill was passed by indefinitely by a Militia, Police and Public Safety subcommittee on a 4-2, party line vote.
Del. Marcus Simon (D-53rd District) had proposed a bill that would have made it a Class 5 felony to manufacture, import, tell, transfer or possess a firearm not detectable by devices like X-ray machines. This bill was also passed by indefinitely in the same subcommittee.
Photo via Town of Vienna
Months after a fire destroyed the Marco Polo restaurant in Vienna, town officials hope they could soon tear the building down.
A fire at the restaurant in October left the building completely destroyed. Two teens were ultimately charged with arson.
Today, the restaurant remains a burned husk and the Vienna Town Council has initiated “blight proceedings” to try and have the building destroyed, an effort that seems to be bearing fruit.
“We are making progress,” said Town Manager Mercury Payton at a Town Council meeting on Monday (Jan. 28). “We are rather close to having what we need for the demolition permit. We don’t have the demolition permit authorized at this point.”
According to Cindy Petkac, director of planning and zoning for the Town of Vienna, discussion on the demolition of the burned building has been proceeding quickly over the last few weeks.
Petkac said staff met with the building’s owner and staff is currently reviewing a demolition permit with revised erosion and sediment control. Water and sewer access to the building has been capped.
“It was well over a month ago that we started blight proceedings,” said Vienna Town Council Member Howard Springsteen. “I’m getting a lot of complaints that this is an eyesore.”
Petkac said demolition at the building is expected within a month.
“The sooner that building gets cleared, the safer it will be,” said Mayor Laurie DiRocco.
Another fire occurred last week, when a large tree fell onto power lines behind the 123-year-old Bouton Hall at the corner of Church and Mill Streets. The building is owned by the Masonic organization, Concord Lodge 307, and contains the Pennywise Thrift Shop.
According to town staff, the damage from the fire is still being assessed. Payton said how the damage will affect planned renovations to the building is too premature to say.
On the eve of a snowstorm sweeping across the region, it was the cybersphere that took a surprising hit.
Around 1 p.m., the City of Falls Church and the Town of Vienna both announced on Twitter that their websites had crashed and were inaccessible.
Sorry for the inconvenience folks, the Town's website is currently down. Our provider is having issues across all services. Will update as work is being done to resolve. pic.twitter.com/JBPGegtwNG
— Town of Vienna, VA (@TownofViennaVA) January 29, 2019
Both localities use CivicPlus, a web development business that manages over 2,500 local government websites.
An employee at CivicPlus said the service is “experiencing technical disturbances” while staff at Vienna said the website provider’s datacenter faced an outage.
By 2:40 p.m., the Town of Vienna reported that their website was functional again. The City of Falls Church site is also currently online.
Photo via Town of Vienna
The Fairfax County School Board approved the FY 2020-2024 Capital Improvement Program (CIP) on Jan. 24, and the much talked about boundary adjustment to relieve the overcrowded McLean High School didn’t make the cut.
The CIP shows that McLean High School is currently at 114 percent of its capacity, with projections showing the population increasing to 127 percent by 2022. Meanwhile, the nearby Langley High School sits at 82 percent capacity following an extensive renovation.
Jane Strauss, the Dranesville District representative on the School Board, had been spearheading the effort to make the boundary adjustments but faced pushback from other School Board members. Strauss confirmed that the boundary adjustment wasn’t docketed in the CIP and the boundary change won’t happen until the 2022-2023 school year at the earliest, and that’s assuming the item is successfully added to next year’s CIP.
Strauss said the growth of Tysons is going to continue fueling expansion in nearby schools, and the schools are caught between the urgency of that growth and taking time to start the shifts as early as possible to keep school groups together.
“The tall high-rises are not producing kids, but existing housing stock is,” said Strauss, nothing that committed workforce affordable housing included in some of the new developments will likely mean an increase in students as well. “Drive around the greater Tysons area and there are other apartment complexes now because of the Silver Line. As job opportunities grow, the whole region will be a better place to live.”
Other school board members said they were uncomfortable approving a spot-boundary change before the School Board conducts a broader boundary examination on Feb. 25.
“I do have concerns about doing a limited boundary change in one area without taking a more holistic analysis and approach,” said Tamara Derenak Kaufax, a representative from the Lee District, at a Jan. 14 work session. “We’re going to have to do what staff has been advocating, doing a holistic approach to [the] system and looking at the impacts.”
Some McLean High School parents were unenthusiastic about the School Board’s decision.
“Sadly, no concrete proposals to address [McLean High School] crowding were added with the final revisions,” said Susan Garrahan, a parent to a McLean High School sophomore. “Some other Board members countered that the McLean-Langley boundary adjustment study should be rolled into a countywide boundary project set to start in late February, and that is what happened. Perhaps this will lead to a remedy for MHS on the same timetable as if it were just a McLean-Langley boundary adjustment project, but if it takes longer as part of a countywide project — and I think that is likely — it will be the students and staff who pay the price of overcrowding every additional day that it takes.”
Strauss also noted that this boundary is a more specific adjustment between neighboring schools than what is usually covered in the broader boundary changes.
“In some cases, boundary changes cast a wide net across multiple schools,” said Strauss. “Looking at the CIP, it shows that Langley High School has room.”
Furthermore, if Langley High School remains below its capacity, Strauss said its class choices might be more limited than other high schools.
“When schools are under-enrolled, you start to have staffing concerns,” said Strauss. “If you’re under-enrolled and yet still have a desire to offer certain languages or electives, you have to hire teachers [for those classes]. But if you’re under-enrolled, you’re not automatically considered for hiring new teachers. There is a benefit [of the boundary change] for an under-enrolled school.”
Though the boundary changes aren’t on the table for short-term changes, Strauss said new modular additions are still possible for the school.
“We can take those out where they are no longer needed and move them,” said Strauss. “There’s always enough funding in the CIP for that.”
Whether or not the School Board is involved in official plans to make boundary changes, Strauss said she is still planning on meeting with the community to develop solutions.
A McLean High School Parent Teacher Student Association meeting on overcrowding is scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 p.m. at McLean High School, though as happened earlier this month, icy conditions could postpone the meeting. Strauss said she plans to meet with Langley High School parents for a similar discussion in March.
Photo via McLean High School PTSA
