By Brian Trompeter
Residents who spoke at July 10 and 12 public hearings on Code Create Vienna, the town’s biggest comprehensive zoning-ordinance rewrite since 1969, told Vienna Town Council and Planning Commission members they wanted better tree preservation, more affordable (or at least not as astronomically priced) housing, darker night skies and the conversion of a former Beulah Road mulching site into park space.
The Code Create initiative (which may be viewed at www.codecreatevienna.com) has been years in the making. Town officials aim to make the zoning code more comprehensible and have detailed several proposed new zoning districts, including multi-family and several localized commercial zones.
Several speakers urged the Council to press for housing with a wider range of prices, saying too many of the town’s more affordable, smaller homes are being razed and replaced with $1 million-plus houses.
Sam Ressin, a 2016 James Madison High School graduate, said he cannot afford to live in his home town, where the majority of land is zoned for single-family housing.
“I’d like to stay, if the town will have me,” he said, adding, “Please don’t restrict my freedom to live where I choose . . . As my mom always says, ‘There is a lid for every pot.’”
Vienna resident Mike Mittel favored maintaining the town’s current 35-foot height limit (it’s proposed to be 42 feet in the Avenue Central District) and focusing on commercial development in the core. He agreed that rental units and other forms of affordable housing were needed in the Maple Avenue corridor.
“We need a little bit more mix if we’re going to do residential along there,” he said.
Town residents Lea Giovanniello and Sandra Shinn wanted officials to do more to preserve the town’s tree canopy.
“There should be some incentive for developers to preserve existing trees, where possible,” Shinn said.
Robert McCahill, president of the North East Vienna Citizens Association (NEVCA), on July 10 said the town should adopt a tree ordinance and establish a tree commission. McCahill also favored shielded lighting in the light-industrial area along Dominion Road, N.E., and Mill Street, N.E., saying businesses there likely do not know how much their lighting affects neighboring residents.
Fellow NEVCA member Linda Belk pressed Vienna officials to convert the forming mulching site along Beulah Road into park us, which she said long had been marked on town maps.
Vienna resident Deborah Kennedy testified July 10 that the proposed code changes would be insufficient without concomitant changes to the membership and processes of the Vienna Board of Architectural Review (BAR), a relatively little-known body that constitutes a “hidden power source.”
“Decisions of design and architecture suitability are determined by the BAR,” Kennedy said. “Council can adopt a new building code, but it is the BAR that determines how to implement the code. It is the BAR, not the Council, that determines the design of Vienna.”
BAR’s five members serve three-year terms and current members have been in place for up to 20 years, Kennedy said. The board’s decisions often rest on members’ architectural-style preferences, and smaller developers sometimes have difficulty navigating the process successfully, she said.
Kennedy suggested expanding BAR to seven members and allotting them just two terms. She also favored rotating memberships across the town’s various boards and commissions to produce “better, broader government” and said town officials should recruit members for those groups at every public event.
“This is Vienna,” she said. “There are good, smart people out there, and if we can’t find them, we’re not doing something right.”
The BAR also will be weighing in on Code Create, but needs more time to assemble its report and recommendations, said chairman Roy Baldwin, who is seeking a Town Council seat this fall.
The Town Business Liaison Committee (TBLC) also will be submitting its own detailed suggestions at a later date, said the group’s vice chairman, Tim Fricker, who owns Bikes@Vienna.
Fricker complimented the Vienna Planning and Zoning Department on its Code Create efforts and said TBLC members “see this as a tool and resource that will benefit our entire business community in the future.”
Preliminarily, the TBLC would like to see the proposed Avenue Center District’s boundaries extend from Lawyers Road to Branch Road, S.E., instead of the proposed eastern boundary of Glyndon Street.
TBLC supports preserving and cultivating the presence of office buildings in the Maple Avenue corridor, especially to support small businesses, nonprofits and companies offering professional services, Fricker said. The group also backs proposed setbacks in the Avenue Center District, allowing animal-care boarding as an approved use within the town and undergrounding utilities where feasible, but is concerned about pedestrian and bicycle safety and access along Church Street, he said.
“Thank you for taking on something that we all know is going to leave somebody unhappy,” Fricker told town officials. “I don’t envy you that.”
Vienna resident Eileen Kragie, who belongs to the Dark Sky Alliance, urged the Council and Planning Commission July 10 to enact the “strictest possible” lighting ordinance to make the town’s skies darker at night. Light pollution affects all forms of animal and plant life, she said.
“The codes must protect everyone from not only poor, but dangerous, lighting,” Kragie said.
Town officials will continue accepting written public comments about the zoning rewrite through July 26. Local residents may drop off their remarks at Town Hall, send an e-mail to mclark@viennava.gov or mail comments to Town of Vienna, c/o Town Clerk, 127 Center St., S., Vienna, VA 22180.
The Vienna Planning and Zoning Department, along with Town Clerk Melanie Clark, will organize the public’s comments concerning Code Create, identify pertinent code references and present them to the Council, which will begin reviewing the materials in late August. Town officials tentatively expect the Council to vote on Code Create in late October.
