By Brian Trompeter
The Vienna Planning Commission voted unanimously June 12 to recommend that the town’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) approve a proposal for a daycare facility for children at 430 Old Courthouse Road, N.E.
Bahareh Ranjbar, who owns Happy Hive Daycare LLC, is seeking a conditional-use permit to operate a facility for up to 12 children in the RS 12.5 residential-zoning district. The 0.3-acre site now is occupied by a recently built, 4,006-square-foot single-family detached home.
Ranjbar already has received a certificate of occupancy from the town to operate a home business serving to up to four children, and has applied for a related family-childcare permit. Businesses serving five or more children require state licensure.
Children using the facility likely would be between 2 months and 5 to 6 years old, Ranjbar said.
A play area would be available on the property’s rear yard, which will be fenced in. The property is bordered on the left side by a neighbor’s wooden fence, but the applicant has yet to submit a permit application to the town government for building a fence along the property’s rear line and on the home’s right side.
Ranjbar told the commission that Fairfax County inspectors recently told her a fence was not required because the property’s rear yard was set back so far from the street. She offered to build a fence if the town required it and Planning Commission member Stephen Kenney said it would be a good idea.
“I would highly recommend you put in a fence, because kids are like spaghetti,” Kenney said. “They’re going to fly all over the place, right?”
A neighbor living diagonally across from the site wrote to town officials asking for some additional plantings to screen the facility, he said.
Kenney also suggested Ranjbar should stagger the children’s arrival and departure times to avoid traffic backups at the site. Commission member Douglas Noble agreed and urged her not to allow clients to back their vehicles out of the driveway when departing.
The daycare center would be operated out of the house’s existing basement and accessed via the back of the home, with occasional entry from the front door and garage. Approximately 1,562 square feet of the basement would be dedicated for the facility’s uses.
The house’s driveway would be able to accommodate two vehicles, and at least 19 parking spaces are available nearby on Old Courthouse Road, N.E., for patron parking or to drop off or pick up children.
During summers, two resident children also will be on the site, in addition to those at the facility.
Town code requires such homes to be located in the operator’s principal residence. Only one non-resident would be employed at the facility, which would operate weekdays between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
Stephen Scavuzzo, a home-based lawyer who lives at 8724 Old Courthouse Road, expressed concerns about traffic along the road and said he wanted to see the neighborhood’s residential character preserved. He described the proposed family day home’s size as “too aggressive.”
“I see this as a disturbing trend in the commercialization of that road,” Scavuzzo said, also citing what he said was a nearby residence with about 10 men and construction trucks.
Commission members supported the daycare application and recommended that the owner provide additional vegetative screening for neighbors, stagger drop-off and pickup times for the children and allow those activities only on the same side of Old Courthouse Road, N.E., as the home.
The commission made its approval conditional on the applicant’s building a security/privacy fence for the play area.
The Vienna BZA will hold a July 17 public hearing on the proposal.
