By Brian Trompeter
A proposed major mixed-use redevelopment at the West Falls Church Metrorail station seeks a nearly 45-percent parking reduction for its multi-family residential buildings, but the McLean Citizens Association on March 1 said a study by Gorove Slade Transportation Planners and Engineers justifying so much less parking was decidedly flawed.
The MCA board of directors unanimously approved a letter to William Hicks, director of Fairfax County Land Development Services, which questioned the parking study’s assumptions and conclusions. Signed by MCA president Scott Spitzer, the letter was drafted by the group’s Planning and Zoning Committee, with assistance from the Transportation Committee.
FCGP-Metro Development LLC is asking county officials to rezone the nearly 24-acre site to allow construction of 85 townhouses, 810 multi-family dwelling units, 110,000 square feet of office space and 10,000 square feet of retail area.
County code requires the applicant to provide 1,781 parking spaces, but the developer would like to reduce that to 1,095. This would include a 44.7-percent parking reduction for multi-family buildings (to just 0.75 spaces per unit), 34 percent for townhouses and 14.3 percent for retail. The site’s office uses would have the standard parking complement.
“If the board is going to reduce parking anywhere in the county, it makes the most sense to do so in a transit-rich environment at a Metro station, which is not only served by Metrorail but by three different bus lines,” said the applicant’s attorney, Andrew Painter, during a Feb. 8 Fairfax County Planning Commission public hearing on the matter.
But MCA contends that the Gorove Slade study was “deficient” because it relied on “incomplete” and “irrelevant” data and did not take into account factors besides proximity to mass transit that affect the reasonableness of the proposed parking reductions or how they would affect the surrounding communities’ livability.
“If authorized, these reductions could well leave inadequate parking for multi-family residential buildings, resulting in ‘overflow’ parking in adjacent residential areas,” Spitzer’s letter read.
It is unrealistic to assume that future residents at the development site automatically will get around using ride-sharing, bicycling and public transportation, according to MCA leaders.
Fairfax County is large and many areas are not conveniently accessible via bicycle or transit or would be prohibitively expensive to reach via ride-sharing services, Spitzer’s letter stated.
In addition, the Gorove Slade study relied too heavily on commuter-transportation data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s zone designated “West Falls Church,” which includes areas far afield from the development site, the letter read.
While 34.3 percent of employees within that zone either work from home or commute via means other than single-occupant vehicles, only 5.17 percent of households within that area are automobile-free. Those data undermine the study’s assumption that people who live close to transit and might be able to commute to work via transit would not wish to own a car, Spitzer’s letter stated.
The letter also disputed Gorove Slade’s parking-mitigation plan, which calls for using a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) garage at the development area to handle overflow parking. The firm’s study did not itemize how many parking spots would be available, if the development’s residents or visitors would need to pay to use them – and if so, at what rate.
The study also did not state whether the transit agency would make the garage available for such purposes, or how WMATA’s commuters might be affected, MCA’s letter read.
Further, the study did not investigate whether some adjacent residential neighborhoods would be affected by spillover parking if the proposed parking reductions do not work out, or demonstrate that the applicant or Gorove Slade had reached out to neighboring areas to address those concerns, the letter stated.
The Planning Commission deferred until March 8 its decision on whether to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve the rezoning.
McLean Volunteer Fire Department president Briefs MCA on Latest Developments: McLean Volunteer Fire Department continues its century-plus of service to the community and is gearing up to buy more apparatuses, said the department’s president, Patricia Moynihan, told the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) in a March 1 presentation.
The department, established in 1921, had the distinction of obtaining the county’s first ambulance. One of 12 volunteer fire stations in the county, it is staffed by three shifts of 12 career firefighters and 75 volunteers.
“The citizens of McLean have always had somebody on duty at Station No. 1,” she said, adding that the area also is served by two career-firefighter stations in Tysons, located on Spring Hill Road and Old Meadow Lane.
A retired 27-year CIA veteran, Moynihan joined the McLean Volunteer Fire Department in 2007 as an Emergency medical technician. She is in her third year as president of the group, having previously served in several other leadership positions.
Volunteers at the McLean Volunteer Fire Department last year contributed about 13,300 hours of service, 9,000 of which were operational and 4,300 administrative. Crews responded to more than 4,500 calls.
The department this summer or fall will take delivery of a new $335,000 ambulance, and in three years is expecting to receive a new fire engine costing nearly $1 million, Moynihan said. With costs like that, fund-raising and grant-seeking will be key goals for the group.
“The cost of apparatus and the long lag time due to supply-chain issues are really kind of a huge focus for our department,” said Moynihan, who recently joined the MCA.
Moynihan rode around on a fire engine as Santa Claus six times this past winter and said her previous intelligence career had made the experience a piece of cake.
“If you could be a CIA officer in Moscow, you certainly disguise yourself well enough to be on a truck,” she said.
