The Town Business Liaison Committee and Mayor Laurie DiRocco are set to host a community brainstorming session about public parking.

The meeting later this week aims to gather feedback from business owners, problem-solve and consider future options, the event description says.

Anyone interested in going can head to the Town Hall (127 S. Center Street) from 6-7 p.m. on Thursday (March 14).

A group is meeting and planning out strategies to handle increased growth in downtown McLean — but, in the meantime, some of that transformation is already underway.

A new building at 6707 Old Dominion Drive was approved by the Board of Supervisors in October. The building is planned to replace a surface parking lot behind the current retail properties with a 44-unit mixed-use residential building.

During the planning process, some nearby McLean residents expressed concerns that the site could have a detrimental impact on local parking and traffic. Today, the property is a frequently crowded parking lot behind a retail complex on Old Dominion Drive.

The building will have 112 parking spaces for existing uses, replacing those taken by the new development, at surface lots to the south and west of the new building.

The plans show four levels of parking structure with 173 spaces located under six floors of residential units. The staff report indicates that the occupants of the 44 new condominium units are unlikely to have a substantial impact on nearby streets.

Because the development contains less than 50 units, none are required to serve as affordable housing, though a contribution to the county’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund is included in the development plans as a condition of approval.

According to the application:

“The benefits of a residential/office/commercial mix of uses has been proven many-fold in the County. This property, located adjacent to what is considered the “South Village” area will hopefully serve to catalyze other redevelopment efforts within the [downtown area].”

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.”

One year ago, there was excitement over a Vienna Town Council’s plan to purchase one floor of a four-story commercial building on Church Street and use it as a public parking garage.

But yesterday (Monday), the Town of Vienna announced that the agreement — which would have made it easier to park in the town’s central business district — had been dissolved.

“Recently, during the project study period, Mill Street Development One notified the Town that its original proposal was not economically feasible and proposed changes to the project, including removing the retail component, reducing the number of public parking spaces, and changing the building’s architectural features,” town staff said in a press release. “The town and Mill Street Development One remain in discussions regarding an alternative parking layout and revised purchase price, but no new substantive proposal has been presented or formalized.”

The initial plan had involved paying $4.6 million to the developer for the 45,000 square-foot second floor of the building.

Plans called for parking to initially be free, but with the option to later charge for parking if needed. According to the press release, town staff are still looking for alternative public parking solutions.

“I was contacted two months ago about the status of the contract and components about the agreement,” Town Manager Mercury Payton at Monday’s Town Council meeting. “The contract is no longer in place. The terms that were agreed upon, the developer wanted to alter a number of those components and the alterations were not in line with what the town is satisfied with.”

“The town remains committed to public parking, whether with this developer or any other developer. We are currently in discussions with entities about that,” Payton added. “The Town remains committed to providing additional public parking in our commercial core in order to make the area a more convenient and accessible destination.”

(Updated at 11 a.m.) Enjoy the free street parking in Tysons while it lasts, because its days may be numbered.

At a Fairfax County Transportation Committee meeting on Tuesday, the Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT) discussed plans to hire a professional parking consultant to explore parking management in Tysons and nearby Reston.

“The intent is to pilot parking management in these areas and expand to other areas as appropriate,” said Henri Stein McCartney, a transportation planner with FCDOT

McCartney said the goal of the study is to determine whether to implement on-street parking restrictions in Tysons and if so, what form those restrictions will take.

“The goal is timely turnover of spaces to encourage space availability,” said McCartney. “Numerous studies show motorists will circle [the] block searching for free on-street parking. [Parking restrictions] reduce number of cars searching for on-street parking. If paid for parking implemented, revenues could enforce parking rules.”

The study would also look at whether to implement paid parking or time restricted parking. Paid parking could take the form of a mobile kiosk or an app, like ParkMobile.

The second option would be time restricted parking, which could either be free or paid. However, McCartney said timed parking often requires more intensive enforcement efforts, with officers needed to monitor timed parking zones.

McCartney said FCDOT had not yet determined how much revenue paid parking could generate in Tysons.

FCDOT staff said the first area of study will be Tysons. Both the county’s comprehensive plan and urban design guidelines call for some form of “managed parking on future grid streets” in Tysons. FCDOT is apparently eyeing the new streets constructed at Boro development as some of the first “managed streets” in Tysons.

Implementation of paid parking in areas like the Reston Town Center has been controversial, to say the least.

McCartney said the study will have to also make sure the parking restrictions don’t push cars into the neighborhoods surrounding Tysons.

“This is inevitable, but it’s something we need to walk into very carefully,” said Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity. “Parking fees drive behavior. We have the real life example of Reston when they implemented those fees and all the angst it created… and loss of revenue.”

Herrity emphasized that any study of paid parking will have to involve close communication with the business community.

“The mistakes made in the past can be a helpful learning process,” said Supervisor Cathy Hudgins.

Hudgins said one of the biggest lessons from the Reston Town Center parking fiasco that should be applied to Tysons is specifying the goals of parking management, like whether the paid parking is a way of raising revenue or managing transportation.

Even before the recommendations come in, the committee seemed supportive of some form of paid or timed parking restrictions. From Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon Bulova:

“Tysons is an urban area that is being developed. It’s important that we manage the parking. In most urban areas that is done. The last thing you want to happen would be people to park on the streets all day long as employees and then customers and people doing business in Tysons don’t have a place to park for a relatively short period of time. It is a complicated issue and we’re doing the right thing starting with a consulting study.”

The study will be measuring on-street and off-street parking supply and demand and model future demand based on approved development plans. In the end, it will recommend appropriate strategies and an implementation plan.

FCDOT staff said an update on the study will be given between six to nine months later, but the recommendations won’t be available for at least another year.

The estimated cost of parking study is $100,000.

Image via Fairfax County Department of Transportation

The following article excerpt is from our content sharing partner, FairfaxNews.com.

It’s the holiday season and the malls are crowded. Parking spots, especially those close to entrances, are at a premium – even more so for people with a handicapped.

So, Fairfax County officials are trying a new idea to keep those accessible spots free for those who  really need them. They’re calling it “empathy parking.” Signs saying “Think of Me, Park Legally” are being placed under the standard ADA accessible parking signs.

It’s a project of the Fairfax Area Commission on Aging and the Fairfax Area Disability Services Board.

Read more at FairfaxNews.com

Photo via Fairfax County

Vienna Mulling Economic Development Push — “Vienna is the only Northern Virginia locality without personnel expressly devoted to economic development, but that may change soon. Vienna Town Council members, in a joint work session Dec. 3 with their Planning Commission counterparts, supported town staff’s proposal to hire a consultant (for about $100,000) who would develop an economic-development strategy and conduct a market study.” [InsideNova]

NBC4 Covers Vienna Bike Corral — The Vienna Town Council’s concern about a bike corral potentially taking up a single parking space on Church Street was the subject of an Adam Tuss story on NBC4 yesterday. Via Twitter, the bikes@vienna store said in response: “Needless to say, we at bikes@vienna support the move. Will the Town get on board with providing much needed bike infrastructure, or will cars still rule?” [Twitter, Twitter]

Photos: Reindogs in McLean — “The 2018 Greater McLean Chamber of Commerce Reindog celebration, which took place Dec. 1… brought out the creativity of local residents and the understanding of canines who found themselves dressed up in holiday-themed costumes.” [InsideNova]

Fairfax Approves Funds for Tech Firm’s Tysons Move — “Cloud computing company Appian Corporation will receive $4 million from Fairfax County for the company’s expansion and new headquarters in Tysons… The Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors approved the Development Opportunity Fund grant from the Commonwealth at its meeting on Tuesday (Dec. 4).” [Reston Now]

Friday Night Fire in Merrifield — “On Friday, November 30 at approximately 11:59 p.m., units from Fairfax County Fire and Rescue and the City of Fairfax Fire Department were dispatched for a reported kitchen fire in the 9400 block of Lee Highway in the Merrifield section of Fairfax County.” [FCFR]

More on Bluestone Lane Coffee Shop — “Bluestone Lane plans to break into the Northern Virginia market next year at the Boro development in Tysons Corner in mid-to-late 2019… The global brand from Australia is known for its ‘avocado smash’ toast, cold-pressed juices, custom teas, and other healthy fare.” [Eater]

PSA: Don’t Illegally Park in Accessible Parking Spaces — “With the holiday shopping season underway, finding parking at shopping centers can be harder than tracking down the hottest toy of the year. As a result, shoppers sometimes illegally park in accessible spaces reserved for people with disabilities. Approximately 75,000 county residents have a disability, so it is critical that these parking spaces remain available to them.” [Fairfax County]

Winchester Woman Arrested for Vienna Assault — “Vienna police officers went to Park Terrace Court, S.E., on Nov. 5 at 1:42 a.m. after authorities received a 911 hang-up call. Police located a resident who advised she had been assaulted by her girlfriend.” [InsideNova]

Fairfax Tax Deadline Extended — “Fairfax County Government Offices will be open Wednesday, December 5. However, because Wednesday has been proclaimed as a national day of mourning to honor the passing of former President George H.W. Bush, the due date for 2018 second installment Real Estate tax payments has been extended until December 6.” [Fairfax County]

Fight to Keep Claude Moore Farm Open — “The National Park Service has said Claude Moore will close Dec. 21, but the Farm is fighting to stay open… The Park Service presented the Friends of Claude Moore Colonial Farm with its standard agreement, but the Friends felt they could not operate under its terms.” [McLean Connection]

County Highlights Opioid Danger — Via a new video, Fairfax County is highlighting the “danger in your medicine cabinet.” Per the county: “An epidemic of addiction to heroin and other opioids has gripped the nation, including here in Fairfax. Protect your community… dispose of your unused prescription drugs safely.” [YouTube]

Church Holding Event on Pornography — Vienna Presbyterian Church is holding an event next month for parents and teens entitled “Pornography, A Public Health Crisis.” The event will include “a workshop to help attendees confidently discuss the real risks or pornography use and an action plan to more effectively block pornography exposure online.” [Patch]

Vienna Town Hall Parking Changes — “The Vienna town government plans to shift some parking spaces in the lot behind Town Hall and install a stormwater-management facility there. The Vienna Town Council on Sept. 17 unanimously approved an up-to-$130,000 contract with LCS Site Services LLC to perform the work.” [InsideNova]

Contribute to Our Flickr Pool — Are you an amateur photographer who wants to share your work with the local community? A professional photog who wants to boost your name recognition via some off-duty snaps? No matter your skill level or background, we would love to show off your photos in our daily Morning Notes post. Want to contribute? Email us or add your shots to our Flickr pool. [Flickr]