After voting a little more than two weeks ago to approve plans to redevelop 380 Maple Avenue, the Vienna Town Council has decided to hold a public hearing on possibly rescinding the rezoning application.
Back in May, the Town Council delayed voting on the proposed project after a resident questioned if the town had notified Fairfax County about the proposed rezoning, which the town hadn’t, and then again at the beginning of June to allow residents and the developer more time to try to reach a consensus through a mediation process.
The Town Council approved the redevelopment, which would add a mixed-use, four-floor building with ground floor retail and more than three dozen multi-family residential condominium units, during its June 17 meeting.
At the latest meeting on Monday (July 1), Town Manager Mercury Payton said that Councilmembers Howard Springsteen and Pasha Majdi requested in late June that a motion to rescind the rezoning application be placed on the agenda for the Monday meeting.
During the Town Council’s meeting Monday night, Majdi shared some of the underlying reasons to revisit the project and, instead of having a motion to rescind, Majdi suggested a joint public hearing with the Planning Commission to review the issues.
“For the rezoning application, I think there were some mistakes made, and I think there are some changes in circumstances we need to recognize,” Majdi said.
First, Majdi said that there was an open question about whether Fairfax County ever received proper notification about the rezoning in a timely fashion. Additionally, Majdi said that safety concerns about the narrowing of Wade Hampton Drive and a new state law about proffers for rezoning applications as reasons for considering rescindment.
“Proffers are probably the most important of a rezoning application,” Majdi said. “The proffer law has changed effective today [July 1].”
The council voted 5-2 — with Mayor Laurie DiRocco and Councilmember Linda Colbert voting no — to hold the public hearing on Monday, July 15.
The meeting on Monday also saw two newcomers sworn onto the council — local small business owner Nisha Patel and Steve Potter, who is a founding member of the Vienna Citizens for Responsible Development.
Photo via Town of Vienna Planning and Zoning
As thunderstorms roll through northeastern Fairfax County today (Tuesday), more than 1,000 residents in the Town of Vienna are without power.
The Dominion Energy map shows about a dozen power outages in the Town of Vienna spanning from Maple Avenue to I-66 as of 4:50 p.m. today (July 2) totaling 1,148 affected customers.
Dominion expects that power will be restored later tonight between 6-11 p.m.
Map via Dominion Energy
The Weekly Planner is a roundup of interesting events coming up over the next week in the Tysons area.
We’ve scoured the web for events of note in Tysons, Vienna, Merrifield, McLean and Falls Church. Know of any we’ve missed? Tell us!
Monday (July 1)
- Laughs in The Lobby Bar — 5-8 p.m. at The Lobby Bar (227 E. Maple Avenue) — A free comedy open mic will take place at the bar in Jammin’ Java.
Tuesday (July 2)
- “The Cat Returns” — 7 p.m. at Angelika Film Center & Café at Mosaic (2911 District Avenue) — The anime movie follows a schoolgirl’s journey into a feline world. Tickets cost $14.50.
Wednesday (July 3)
- Women’s World Cup — 3-5 p.m. at Strawberry Park (2910 District Avenue) — People can watch the semifinal game featuring Netherlands vs. Sweden for free starting at 3 p.m. in the park in the Mosaic District.
- Jackson Browne — 8 p.m. at the Filene Center (1551 Trap Road) — The singer-songwriter from the 1970s is coming to Wolf Trap. Tickets start at $45.
Saturday (July 6)
- Help Meow-t! Cat Adoption — 1-4 p.m. at Loyal Companion (2905 District Avenue) — The Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation is hosting an on-the-spot cat adoption event.
- Sean Chuyn at Caboose Commons — 1-4 p.m. at Caboose Commons (2918 Eskridge Road) — D.C.-area musician Sean Chuyn will perform live music at the beer garden and coffee house.
- Athena Styles Patio Pop Up — 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at Famille (700A W. Broad Street) — Outside on the Famille patio, an Athena Styles pop-up shop will sell handmade jewelry, accessories and gifts.
Sunday (July 7)
- Summer Sunday Concerts in the Park with Dupont Brass — 5 p.m. at the McLean Central Park Gazebo (1468 Dolley Madison Blvd) — The free concert series continues with a “new” brass band playing everything from songs by Miles Davis to Jay-Z. Free parking will be at the McLean Community Center or the Dolley Madison Library.
- Josh Groban — 8 p.m. at the Filene Center (1551 Trap Road) — The singer, songwriter and actor is coming to Wolf Trap during his Bridges Tour. Tickets start at $42.
- AIR [An Outdoor Experience] — 8-11 p.m. at Tysons Biergarten (8346 Leesburg Pike) — Every Sunday this summer, the beer hall has dancing, DJing, food, hookah and drinks. Tickets cost $5 for early bird registration or $10 at the door.
Last week, Tysons Reporter rounded up a list of local Fourth of July events.
Photo via Sean Chuyn Music/Facebook
As new developments crop up around Vienna, even the Money and King Funeral Home at 171 W. Maple Avenue — Vienna’s oldest business — isn’t immune to change.
The funeral home was founded in 1881 — the same year President Garfield was assassinated and a gunfight took place at the O.K Corral. From then until earlier this year, the business was family owned. But when the last of that family line turned 80 this spring, the business was passed on to others who had worked closely with the family over years.
But President and General Manager Robert Carmical, who has worked at the funeral home since 1994, says that while some things have evolved over time, the service hasn’t changed.
“We’re here to help,” said Carmical. “The [work we do] is in the little things, like printing booklets and arranging the music. It’s a celebration of this person’s life.”
Over time, Carmical said there’s been some evolutions in the funeral industry. Most funerals were traditionally held in homes or in churches, but with the slow erosion of church connections, Carmical said businesses like his are seeing more people asking to hold the services at the funeral home. Accordingly, the old church-style pews have been replaced by chairs.
He also said cremation has become more popular as an alternative to burial.
Carmical’s favorite thing about funerals is learning about people.
“You learn things about people, like their hobbies,” said Carmical. “These are things some people don’t know about [their friends], like they collected stamps or toys, or how everyone has a sweet tooth.”
Ashley Hopko contributed to this story
Cong Wang really likes bubble tea, and he opened his new Gem Tea at 155 W. Maple Avenue to share that passion with more people.
One of the big things Wang says drives people away from bubble tea is the idea of inflexibility. At Gem Tea, Wang says customers can feel free to adjust the tea as they like, offering non-dairy milk options and a wide variety of fruit flavors.
If enough people request something, Wang said he’s open to adding things to the menu. For instance, yesterday someone came in asking for a protein powder to be added to his tea, so Wang is looking into how to make that work.
The restaurant is open seven days a week, opening at 11 a.m. and closing between 8-9 p.m. The quick-service restaurant had a soft opening on May 16, but held its grand opening on June 1.
Wang said Gem Tea isn’t part of a chain. He’s from Vienna and just wanted to open a tea place in his neighborhood.
Hair studio Sundown and Rise Up is coming to the former space of the Maple Avenue Market in the Town of Vienna.
Sundown and Rise Up will offer haircuts, blow-drys, coloring, highlights and balayage services, according to its website.
From the website:
Sundown & Rise Up represents a new emergence into a truly one of kind dynamic salon work space centered upon hair, creativity, freedom, community, music and positive vibrations. Sundown & Rise Up strives to provide Vienna and the neighboring communities a new kind of hair salon experience.
The Maple Avenue Market closed in February after nearly 10 years in downtown Vienna.
The studio is set to open “very early July 2019” at 128 E. Maple Avenue according to an Instagram post by the owner of the studio.
After an earlier work session decried the building design as boring, designers of the Vienna Market mixed-use project came back with a slightly more spiced-up project.
Criticisms of the original designs included notes that the building did not offer interesting or unique street faces on every side of the project. The new redesign of the project was presented at the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) Work Session on Friday, June 14.
Most of the distinctions are fairly subtle, but enough to excite architecture wonks on the BAR. Members of the Board praised the new bay windows — glass spaces that project forward from the main room — as a new visually distinctive feature of the project.
The proposed project is planned to replace the Marco Polo building that was destroyed in a fire last year. The project would add 44 condominiums and 8,200 square feet of retail space to 245 W. Maple Avenue.
Representatives of Northfield, the site developer, said at the meeting that a focus of the work between the last work session and this one was rustication, giving the building a more rough-hewn look as compared to the more clean-cut original design.
The building still has a ways to go before approval. Another work session is planned for next Friday (June 28), prompting one BAR member to remark that his wife was getting suspicious of the number of “work sessions” he was attending for the project.
The Vienna Town Council is entering the first stages of a process to bring electric scooters and dockless bicycles to town.
According to staff at a Town Council work session on Monday, June 10, a potentially shared mobility pilot would include both electric bicycles and scooters as “self-propelled vehicles,” but more still needs to be determined.
For starters, where will people ride electric scooters in Vienna? Council members expressed concerns about having them either on Maple Avenue or the adjoining sidewalks, which are typically only 5 feet wide and include planter boxes that narrow the sidewalks considerably. But elected officials seemed equally concerned about the prospect of having electric scooters complicating the already notoriously dangerous and congested Maple Avenue.
The discussion of a potential pilot program comes after a feasibility study for a regional bike-share network — commissioned by the City of Fairfax — was completed last fall. The Vienna process follows in the footsteps of the City of Fairfax, which Vienna staff said has launched a pilot program running from this June to next year.
Both staff and officials expressed some misgivings and frustrations with the prospect of bringing in electric scooters. Staff said that a story had come out this year that Lime Scooters would be coming to Fairfax City and Vienna, prompting a tense series of phone calls from Fairfax and Vienna staff advising Lime that they had not gone through the proper approval process.
Planning Commissioner Mary McCullough also referenced a Washington Post story that only 7 percent of regional residents reported using e-scooters as their preference for getting from one place to another.
The next step for the scooter approval process is a work session planned for sometime in the fall, which the Town Council said will likely include meeting with the Transportation Commission.
People in the Town of Vienna can learn about how future development might change access to the Maple Avenue area at a meeting tomorrow (Wednesday).
The meeting will focus on how “reasonably anticipated” development through 2030 via the Maple Avenue Commercial (MAC) zone and by-right projects could change traveling along the Maple Avenue corridor, according to the event description.
The meeting is the second one connected to the town’s Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation & Land Use Study, which was commissioned to look at transportation needs along Maple Avenue from James Madison Drive to Follin Lane. The study area also includes Church Street from Lawyers Road to East Street as well as Courthouse Road and Locust Street.
A meeting in April summarized the current transportation conditions in the study’s area.
The third — and final — phase of the study will evaluate possible strategies to improve accessibility challenges along the corridor.
“Transportation recommendations could include changes to vehicular access, geometric and operational modifications to specific intersections or locations, transit service improvements, enhancements to bicycle and pedestrian networks, and transportation demand management policies and strategies,” according to the Town of Vienna.
Recommendations from the study, which is being done by Kimley-Horn, a firm that provides transportation, planning and engineering consulting, are expected later this summer, according to the town.
The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. at the Town Hall Council Chambers (127 S. Center Street) and will include small-group activities and discussion.
Vienna’s Board of Architectural Review (BAR) decried plans for the Vienna Market project as rigid, plain and unbecoming for Maple Avenue.
At a work session on May 24, the BAR met with the developers of the project set to replace the Marco Polo building and other surrounding properties. The proposed project would add 44 condominiums and 8,200 square feet of retail space — along with a 32-space underground parking garage — to 245 W. Maple Avenue.
While the project’s architects discussed adding “rustification” and more brick to the building, BAR members expressed frustration with how bland the project appeared.
“My main concern here is the overall feel has gone [away] from all four sides offering something of interest and unique in the town,” Laine Hyde, the vice chair of the BAR, said. “I look at all four sides and I see flat. I’m not seeing the detail and mix of materials. I’m not seeing the variety of individual buildings; just sameness on all sides.”
Paul Layer, the chair of the BAR, said that earlier towers and variance to the rooftop gave the building some prestige on the Maple Avenue side.
“I think Maple Avenue deserves more than this building next door,” Layer said.
But the designers of the building noted that the project is trapped between ambitions from the BAR and a community that regularly rallies against projects that don’t fit with existing buildings on the street.
“We are trying to keep the building grand,” Bill Foliaco, a representative from Lessard Design, said. “It’s going to be large. But we wanted the storefront to feel like more than standard suburban town center. We want this to feel like it’s been here a while, not brand new. My concern is not financial, but in the current world we live in, I’m afraid it won’t come out the way we imagine it.”
The BAR concluded that another work session will need to be held at an unspecified date for it and the developer to continue working together to find something that will not only satisfy both parties but is likely to be approved by a Vienna Town Council with a new, decidedly anti-outsized development bent.
Image via Vienna Board of Architectural Review
