VDOT Presentation on the Columbia Pike / Washington Blvd Interchange

Carlin Springs Bridge Project Meeting

Rosslyn Circle Pedestrian and Bicycle Improvements

Saturday was the heart of the Pike Neighborhoods Plan Charrette: the Community Hands-on Design Session. I was impressed by the number of folks willing to be up and around at 9am on a Saturday ready to do 5 1/2 hours of urban planning. As we arrived, we signed in and were split up to different tables by Civic Association. Each table was focused on a portion of the Pike that included their Civic Association. Since I'm a Penrose resident, I was at a table for the eastern end of the Pike - our area covered from approximately Glebe Rd to the Washington Blvd interchange. There were other tables focused on the middle of the Pike, the west end of the Pike and also 2 tables focused specifically on Foxcroft Heights as there appears to be some specific tension going on in that small neighborhood as a result of the changes coming to the Navy Annex and the Cemetery.

In our small groups, we went through three different exercises designed to get us thinking and to elicit feedback for the design team. The first was a large poster showing various different examples of mixed use buildings, mid-rise residential buildings and low-rise residential buildings. We were then given red and green stickers to put on the poster indicating which buildings particularly liked and which we particularly disliked and encourage to write on the posters why we felt that way.

For the 2nd exercise, we were given a map which had divided the Pike into zones. The first zone was the already existing commercial revitalization nodes that the Form Based Code defined. The second covered the multi-family residential areas closest to the Pike. The third covered those multi-family residential areas that were farther from the Pike, those that interface directly with the single family home areas. We were asked to examine those zones and draw any changes we thought were necessary as far as what areas were in each zone, and then to imagine what we thought those zones should look like as far as building height, style, etc and draw & write that on the map as well.

The final, and most fun exercise, gave us a map of our subsection of the Pike along with paper, scissors and magic markers and we were encouraged to draw and write all over it to illustrate our dream version of the Pike. What would we change? What would we preserve? My group went to town, by the time we were done there were additional street connections, wider sidewalks, additional bike trails connections, new parks, community gardens and rec centers, along with mixed income, mixed age housing, senior housing and more.

Finally each table picked a spokesmen and presented their ideas to the whole of the group. There were a lot of common themes and a lot of very interesting ideas presented. I look forward to seeing how all of our crazy ideas and dreams will be translated into rules and regulations by the design team.

Even if you missed the hands-on session, it is not too late to get your own crazy ideas and wild dreams for the Pike taken into consideration! The same set of consultants who ran us ragged on Saturday have setup shop in Siena Park and are holding open office hours on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday of this week from 10am to 6pm. They are also having an open house on Tuesday evening from 7pm-9pm to show their interim progress. Finally, they will present their progress-to-date back at the Sheraton on Wednesday evening from 7pm-9:30pm. Often on local mailing lists people ask "Who decided this? When did these decisions get made? Why are these the priorities?" The answers is right here, right now. The plans that are coming out of this charrette will shape the Pike for at least the next 30 years. Take some time and be heard!
For additional details, see the Pike Neighborhoods Plan website.

Tonight was the kick-off meeting for the Pike Neighborhoods Plan Charette. You may be wondering "What is the Pike Neighborhoods Plan?" or "What's a Charette?" or "What did I miss if I wasn't there?!" Read on to find out.

What is the Pike Neighborhoods Plan?

You may be familiar with the work being done to revitalize Columbia Pike, or you may not. There is a lot of history that provides important context: the Columbia Pike Initiative, the Columbia Pike Revitalization Plan, the Form Based Code, the Street Space Plan, the Multimodal Project, the Pike Transit Initiative. The opportunity before us all right now, however, is giving input on the Neighborhoods Plan. In the interest of getting to the end goal, here's the short, short version of Pike revitalization history.

The County and community have been working together since the late 90s to revitalize and reshape the Columbia Pike Corridor into a better place to live and have identified several goals we would like to achieve. Past initiatives have focused on goals such as improved transportation options, better pedestrian and bicycle accessibility, improved commercial design including street-engaged retail and careful transitions between building heights. The current initiative (the Columbia Pike Land Use & Housing Study) is addressing another goal of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Plan, maintaining an ethnically diverse and culturally rich community by retaining enough affordable housing for a diverse community to be able to remain here.

As property on the Pike has gotten more valuable and living on the Pike has become more attractive, it has become more and more financially attractive for apartment complex owners to renovate and then increase the rent in their complexes. A good example is the Whitmore at 4301 Columbia Pike. They evicted their existing residents, renovated their apartments and then re-leased at higher rents. If we as a community do nothing about this, the trend is likely to continue. There are 7,500 "affordable" housing units on Columbia Pike. Of those, only 1,000 are so-called "committed" units which are in some way obligated to stay affordable. The other 6,500 or so-called "market rate affordable", or units which are essentially affordable only because the landlord doesn't feel the market will bear a higher rent. With a loss of affordable housing comes a loss of diversity, one of the traits that many people love about the Pike communities, so a study was commissioned by the County on what could be done to retain those affordable housing units on the Pike. The Pike Neighborhood Plan will be the end result of that study, and that is what is being hammered out at this Charrette.

What is a "Charette"?

A Charette is what happens when you let business majors plan public meetings. Instead of 2 hours of boring lecture, you get five hours of break-out sessions, small group activities, collaboration and deliverables. Tonight was the kickoff meeting which set the stage of what we're trying to do as a community and what we need to be thinking about. Tomorrow (Saturday the 25th from 9am to 2pm) is the down-and-dirty business of detail work. Those who participate will be broken into small groups, given some guidelines on what questions need answering and let loose with giant sheets of paper and magic markers.

What happened at the Kick-off Meeting?

A whole lot of background material got spit out all at once, then individuals in the community were given a chance to talk a bit about what is on their minds going into this process. Here's my attempt at summarizing the background material; if you were there, please feel free to add any additional insights I may have missed in the comments.

As I noted above, the goal of the Neighborhood Plan is to retain affordable housing. The dangers facing the current affordable housing are twofold: as the land becomes more valuable and the Pike becomes a more attractive place to live, the economics make it more and more likely that the landowners will in some way redevelop the existing market-rate affordable units. Either renovating and raising rents, or conceivably converting the rental units to townhouses to sell. In order to create the best policy to retain these affordable units, it is essential to understand the market forces at play for these apartment complexes. Several consultants have been brought in and they have done a lot of analysis about what is economically feasible on the Pike. It is up to us as a community to use that information and analysis to determine the best possible policy to produce the kind of community that we want to live in.

The consultants selected a few representative complexes on the Pike and worked out number of possible redevelopment scenarios for them. They essentially said "In what ways might a landlord want to redevelop their apartment complex?" and worked out the economic realities of trying to do each of them. Since changing zoning laws (or providing an alternative to existing zoning like the Form Based Code) is one of the potential strategies being considered, they didn't limit themselves only to redevelopment scenarios that would be possible under the current zoning.

The most interesting and relevant findings include:

• In order to be worth the investment, landowners will generally need to replace each existing unit with 3 new units.
• In most cases, current zoning does not allow enough density to be worth redeveloping
• The current rental rates born by the market in the Pike corridor are insufficient to support the construction of buildings over 5 stories
• The kind of low-rise, high density development that best fits the current economics of the Pike lend themselves to large, regularly shaped (rectangular) lots

The potential toolbox for retaining affordable housing is some combination of the following in exchange for the inclusion of committed affordable units:

• Providing low or no-interest construction loans.
• Granting bonus density over what would normally be allowed
• Granting tax breaks or payments in lieu of taxes
• Paying for Green improvements to lower the developers operating costs
• Providing historic tax credits to renovate historic apartment buildings

After the background presentation, attendees were given a chance to raise questions or offer comments. One person questioned how committed the county is to retaining affordable housing. Another questioned why we should try to retain affordable housing at all. The majority however, spoke in strong support of retaining the diverse cultural communities we have on the Pike, though there were clear divisions on the best way to do so.

With all of the information and analysis provided, it is up to us as a community to determine what strategies we're willing to use to retain our communities diversity. Do we want to pay landlords to include affordable units if they develop? Would we rather allow them to build higher density buildings in exchange for those units so we can stretch those dollars a bit farther? Would we rather pay for Green improvements for redeveloped apartment buildings so our communities get some environmental benefit in addition to the diversity benefit? If we're willing to grant bonus density, then how much? What should those building looks like? Where should they go? How should they interact with the streets around them? With the neighboring houses? These are the questions we need to settle at Saturday's Charrette. I encourage you to attend as much of the Charrette as you can - there are many opportunities, just check out the calendar.