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Staff may now begin the presentation.

Thank you, and happy new year.

Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the commission.

We are excited to be here.

We are at an important milestone in the in the planning process, and as we do with all of our small area plans, we have check-ins with the planning commission to make sure we're headed in the right direction.

And so tonight is really a compilation of what we've heard from the community, what we've compiled internally, hopefully get directions from the commission.

This is very much hopefully a conversation.

So if you have questions along the way, please feel free to weigh in and uh hopefully get some some guidance from you tonight.

So tonight we are going to talk a little bit.

One of the questions we had early on from the community is uh why do we need a plan on the corridor and why now?

Uh we had this a little bit with the commission as part of the incorporate that um and uh talk a little bit about context.

Most of our small area plans are much smaller.

This is uh much larger.

I'm gonna throw out some numbers in an upcoming slide to talk about scale.

This is a big big plan for our city, um, both in terms of scale and importance, and then uh the really the big thing that we want to talk to you tonight is some of the plan principles and some of the organizing themes that wrap around those.

And again, did we get it right?

Are there things we missed?

And um, are there other things the commission wants us to consider?

Because this is really a foundational element for us to build on the upcoming plan.

So um please share your thoughts and comments along the way.

So next slide is um uh this is something we shared with the community, and uh the question was why plan, why now?

And we think there are two elements at each end of Duke Street that are going to shape and influence uh what happens along the corridor in the coming years.

One is we have the catalytic project of the former landmark mall, now called the West End.

Of course, we have Old Town, and both of those are putting economic and development pressure on Duke Street.

And uh I think our opinion is rather than responding on a case-by-case basis, uh, the city and community should have a vision of what we want to have happen for this corridor.

This is incredibly important for us.

Um just to throw out some comparisons in terms of scale.

Um, so it's a three and a half mile long corridor.

Um to put that in some comparison, that is three times longer than the entire length of Potomac Yard, one of our biggest planned redevelopment areas.

So this is a very large important corridor for the city.

Um just we're gonna talk about this later, but just to some order of magnitude.

So Potomac Yard is roughly about 225 acres on this corridor.

There's 400 acres of impervious surface.

Just to sort of put scale and magnitude in as we think about this corridor.

Um again, big corridor, lots of importance for the city.

Um, all of the rental housing adjacent to the corridor is market rate affordable.

And so that also has challenges and opportunities as we think about this plan.

So next slide is um again context.

Uh, one of the things we heard from the community along the way, uh, and also city council as part of uh preparation of this process was the importance of small businesses.

There are a lot on this corridor, and one of the things we heard, Carrie's gonna talk to you about some of the things we heard, but one of the things we heard from many of the businesses is um if our rents go up substantially, we don't know if we can stay in the corridor.

Uh the other thing we heard from some of the businesses is this is sort of a gateway entrance into the city.

So we started a food truck, now we go to brick and mortar, and now we sort of open this is because of affordability in portions of the business areas.

This is sort of a gateway location for many of those to enter the city.

Other sort of important elements are up here.

I'm not going to touch on all of these.

Hopefully, we can come back.

So let's go ahead and jump to the next slide.

And with that, I'll turn over to Carrie.

Thank you.

Carrie Beach with uh neighborhood planning, planning and zoning.

Um so we we began this planning process a year ago.

We spent um several months doing some preliminary planning work, and that involved really getting to know the stakeholders in this community, understanding who they were, how we could best engage them, and coming up with a plan for doing so.

Um we formally launched in June of uh 2025, and we also at that we had a community meeting and launched an online poll and spent the summer and fall really gathering feedback from from our stakeholders.

Um in December, um, which is our most recent um community engagement event, we held an open house where we shared with the community our um uh recent our land use themes, excuse me, um, and Jeff's gonna talk a little bit more about those uh later in the presentation.

Um really we're about to enter into the thick of the planning process, so where we're really gonna start to put meat on the bones.

The first um couple phases of the process we're getting to know the community, gathering feedback, starting to create some the principles of the plan that we're gonna establish the intent of where we're going, and now we're really we really are where we're going, and we need to start developing concepts and framework that will really be the backbone of the plan.

Ummediately up next will be the city council work session later this month, as well as some uh workshops with the community for folks who either weren't able to join us in December or would like to kind of delve a little deeper on the land use themes.

Um we anticipate that by um the fall we'll have a draft plan, and by winter of about this time next year we'll have a public hearing.

So in broad brush, that's our plan schedule.

And a little bit about our engagement.

So as Jeff mentioned, this is a large plan area.

Um, and like Alex West, we really needed to come up with a kind of multifaceted engagement strategy to make sure we were making it easy for all the different stakeholders to engage, and that includes included in this plan area businesses more so than in Alex West.

So we were kind of going at it looking at both residents and businesses in this plan area, and so that's a little bit different.

Um but one thing I wanted to let's see, mention is that this area is about 15% of the city's population, so a lot of folks live here.

It's about 61% rental, um, which is a little bit higher than the city um average, and as Jeff mentioned, 300 businesses.

So again, we're we're specifically targeting businesses.

We were knocking on business doors, going and introducing ourselves.

Um, and in our um online poll early in the process, we got 77 business owners to respond.

That's nearly half of the business owners in the area, so we feel pretty good about the breadth of that engagement.

Um in general, we're hearing some common themes from this engagement, um, concerns about traffic and safety, people walking and driving and biking in this area, and people who want to see it better than it is now.

Um folks who are talking about how the corridors is really a bit of a mishmash, and there are opportunities to maybe uh bring make it more cohesive, make it a place that is a collection of neighborhoods as opposed and has some continuity.

Folks talking about housing affordability, as I mentioned, 61% rental who are worried about getting priced out.

Um, it also is home to some of the city's um kind of entry-level home ownership areas, um, both in terms of a lot of condo properties and some of our entry-level homeownership uh fee simple homes.

Lots of folks love the small businesses that are out there, and so have talked about I'd like to be able to not only get to them more easily, either on foot or by bike or in my car, but I'd also like to make sure they stay.

And so we're we're thinking about that.

Folks love the open space in the Duke Street corridor.

There is quite a bit of it.

But how can we make it easier to get to and enhance the amenities that are in it?

Okay.

So our first order of business in the fall, after we had gathered a lot of this input that I mentioned, was to create some draft guiding principles with the community.

And these really establish the intent of the plan and where it's going to go.

It's what we're going to hang the framework and the concepts off of and sort of check back and say, well, does this consistent with the principles that we've established?

So we we developed draft principles, brought those to the community, got some feedback, brought them back.

And they are really the kind of north star for where we're going.

As I mentioned, those are informed by all of the community feedback, but also by existing city policy and working with our colleagues in other departments about other initiatives that they've got going on, Housing 2040, other upcoming policy initiatives that we'll be thinking about.

So making sure that that's woven into what we're doing, as well as kind of existing best practices in terms of planning.

So as Carrie talked about, uh we spent a lot of time with the community trying to figure out what are those elements that we want to sort of bake into this plan.

And so what you see before you is a list of plan principles.

This is where we start all of our plans.

As Carrie pointed out, this is our North Star.

So as we are thinking about balancing different things, pointing back to is this achieving what we said we wanted to do?

So as topics and ideas and approaches come out, these are really important to make again check them against this achieving what we all agreed we wanted to do.

So I'm not going to touch all of these.

I know you have these before you, but they're they're broken into categories of land use and design.

I I will touch on the first one because we had a lot of comments from the community about this one, which is all ages and abilities.

We had from kids to seniors and everywhere in between, making sure our plan accommodated everyone.

And I thought that was we had a lot of comments about that because this is such a long corridor, and whether it's the design of the park or the design of the streets or access to transit, making sure kids and seniors and everywhere in between can access and use them.

Creating walkable communities.

I think we heard a lot about safety from probably everyone, whether you're walking, biking, or driving, safety was discussed.

Carrie talked about the point, and I think this is something I'm gonna address in one of the upcoming slides, is it doesn't feel planned because then it feels like a collection of things that happened over time.

And so how can how can we address that in a more cohesive way?

The one thing that is not up here that came out of the community comments, and I heard a lot is a lot of pride of individual neighborhoods.

I love where I live, I love this park, I love this grocery store, lots of really great things.

So pride was very strong, but how do we how do we address this corridor in a way that sort of stitches our neighborhoods together?

Duke Street feels very separate.

Um how do we do that in a way that makes sense?

Um next slide is um mobility and safety.

Uh I alluded to this.

Uh I think everyone brought up safety of all the users.

Uh, and so, and that could be as simple as a comment of I'm walking to the bus stop and I don't have shade, uh, or I don't feel safe crossing the street.

I think many of you know our transportation environmental services department is right now looking at a redesign of the Duke Street corridor cross section to accommodate transit.

So some of that can be addressed.

Um, other elements will need to be addressed with redevelopment.

We don't have enough right away to accommodate some of the streetscape improvements and other things that need to happen along the corridor.

Um Carrie also alluded to this, uh, and I think this is important as we think about the corridor.

And then also how do we have elements that make it a little different because it's so long, and I think one of the things we've talked about in the past with the commission is I think one of the strengths of our city is as you move through the city, you sense the different neighborhoods.

They feel different.

And so Duke Street, I think has an opportunity to have as you're moving through that corridor to move through different neighborhoods, and sort of that stitch that connects them is Duke Street.

So maybe there are consistent streetscape, consistent street lights, consistent other things, and then variety as you move up and down the corridor.

Next slide is parks and open space.

These are one of the things you're gonna see in the next plan graphic is there's a lot of very large public parks, which is very much an asset for the corridor, but we also heard from the public is we don't have a lot of neighborhood parks.

They're sort of on either end, and in the middle, we don't really have a lot of neighborhood parks.

Um, so we think that's an opportunity, and then also providing better connections and better amenities in the parks that are either existing or new.

The next one is housing.

Uh Carrie talked on this.

Uh this is obviously been a discussion point with the community, I think is an important point for us and as a city, and with housing 2040 preservation is going to be an important conversation, which I think leads into some of the themes that we're going to talk about.

Um as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, all of the rental housing is market rate affordable.

So this is a huge housing resource for the city.

Um next slide is health and sustainability.

One of the things we have been doing is working with our health department to weave in some of the elements that they are and data points that they are weaving into their planning process, and making sure we're aligned in both strategies and implementation.

Uh, and that can be simple things like safer access, access to grocery stores, um, access to goods and services, things that are coming out that we think about in our plan, but aligning them with the livability and health indicators that they are also working on.

Uh, next slide.

So this is a diagram we did internally, sort of after the principles, and we wanted to sort of share this, and this was sort of the beginning point to get to the sort of next graphic.

Um, the one thing we did not talk about, and I think all the commissioners are aware of this.

There is this is one of the areas of the city that has a lot of topography, um, particularly east of Quaker Lane.

And so uh one of the things we talked about was this idea of sort of ridges and valleys and and how that's shaping some of the planning process and discussions along along Duke Street.

Um, most of our areas, if you look at site plans, are actually very flat.

This is not one of them.

So that shapes some of our conversations.

Um the other thing we started to do was sort of map out where are those small businesses and where are the sort of more affordable spaces.

Um we also started thinking about where is the existing retail.

I think one of the things we heard from the community is we have grocery stores, we don't want to lose them.

Uh we have neighborhood serving uses, we don't want to lose them.

Um the other thing that we have not yet talked about, which I think is really unique on this corridor, the amount of civic uses.

Um, whether from the east end to the west, um, we start with Union Station, we have fire stations and police facilities and libraries and our public campus.

Um, and one of the things you see right here is we're calling it sort of the civic and city campus.

Um, this is a again, just to put scale in comparison, it's a 55-acre site that the city owns that we use for various things.

And so this is our opportunity to sort of have a planned approach for what's there.

Um, and uh one of the things we've been talking about is is there a more public-facing element to that, and is there a more functional thing?

A city needs to have functional things.

We need to store buses and dump trucks and have salt domes, and and how do you do that?

And we're gonna talk about that in the next slide as well.

So, this is sort of an idea of how we begin organizing a really big corridor with lots of sort of complex moving pieces.

So that led us to the next slide, which is sort of beginning to sort of think about themes and how that implements the principles and how it thinks about addressing future sort of plan elements as well.

So what you see here are a couple different categories.

I'm gonna start with the opportunity sites.

So those are sites we think the plan should recommend redevelopment.

So to put that also to just scale that so North Potomac Yard is about 70 acres.

So quite a bit of redevelopment opportunity there.

And the sort of big one that jumps out at you is Fox Chase.

And that is someone's gonna correct me, I'm sure, but I think it's about 1,500 units.

So very large site, very large number of units.

And one of the things that our housing office is looking at through the housing master plan, but also as part of this process is the market is going to push up rents.

And what can we do potentially to intervene in that process, particularly for some of these very very large housing resources?

So we have we have been seeing rent escalation, we think that's going to continue with or without this plan.

And this plan gives us a way and potentially tools to sort of intervene.

We're not there yet on which tools and how we use that yet.

That's a different process and discussion is as we move through this process and uh housing 2040, small businesses in red.

Um so one of the things we were thinking about that is the area that has the most businesses, has the most affordability of spaces.

Uh so one thought was maybe one approach is we don't add density to height in those locations because that incentive that increases property value and incentivizes redevelopment, and I think uh one of the challenges with redevelopment that's probably the most expensive per square foot space uh for retailers and small businesses.

So keep some of that, and maybe it could be a period of time as well.

Maybe there's a check-in time, like in 10 years or five years or some period of time.

Is this working?

How is it working?

Um so that's sort of uh thoughts, discussions we've been having, and then the other is the civic city campus area, uh, and you can see these are sort of diagrammatic, um, but again, sort of public facing and functional elements, and I think the challenge with that, and I think this came up maybe when we introduced this plan as well, is how do we provide connections through that space and still have bike and ped connections, both for the city employees working there, but also the community as well.

Um, so the next couple slides, I I touched on most of these, um, but just to highlight these again.

Sorry, there's a little bit of a delay.

Um, really just what these areas are.

And again, I think one of the things we're really hoping for tonight is are we headed in the right direction?

Because this is really sort of foundational for us as we think about the plan.

Um, so opportunity is probably additional density and height, we don't know how much, but to uh incentivize redevelopment happening there, affordability and growth, looking at tools including density to save and get committed units.

Um next slide is um we talked a lot about small businesses and the importance and civic and city campus.

Next slide.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Carrie and then uh hopefully we'll have a discussion at the end as well.

Uh so just to reiterate um where we are and where we're going, um, we're entering the fuchsia um bubble there where we're gonna start um drafting the plan, immediate next steps is city council in a couple weeks and the workshops for the community and an online uh continued online engagement of the land use themes where folks can participate online if they prefer that to an in-person engagement.

Um really tonight we're looking to get your your feedback and thoughts on on where we are where we're heading.

Thank you so much.

That brings us to commissioner discussion.

Who would like to kick off?

I'm happy to start.

All right, Commissioner Brown.

Um I see on this on this slide right now that you're looking for directions for the court or for the next 15 to 20 years.

Uh my guess would be that you you wouldn't do an amendment to this land use plan for 15 to 20 years, but I wonder if you could just briefly comment on the relationship between this plan and the existing small area plants that intersect this section of Duke Street.

I I'll take a stab at that.

So can you go back to the plan view?

It's probably easier to um so one of the questions we have had is how do we implement this plan?

Um and is it a new Smaria plan?

Um do we amend the existing Somaria plans?

Do we do an overlay district?

And um sorry.

Uh I thought you were saying no, we don't do any of this.

And so I think the short answer, Dave, and we've said this to community, we're not there yet.

Um so I think um we're still trying to figure out what we're trying to do, and then how we do it is gonna be a conversation with the commission, council, and the community.

We're we're just not there yet.

As a follow-up to that, in your in your interactions with the public.

Um is it fair to say that their responses have been uh uh focused on them on a much shorter period of time than 15 to 20 years, they're talking about what they'd like to see happen over the next two or three or four years.

I think um I think one of the things um I think one of the things we're gonna have to do in this plan, and we do this with all of our Somaria plans is prioritize improvements.

So um we're gonna have so we're gonna have an implementation chapter in this plan, and we're gonna have short-term and midterm and long-term improvements.

And I think one of our challenges is gonna be as it always is with all of our SMARA plans.

We want to we want to we want to push everything to the short term.

And and I think that the discussion with the community commission and council is what do we want to prioritize?

Because if we prioritize everything, nothing is a priority.

And so we're gonna have to pick, because I think we didn't get here overnight with the issues we're trying to solve, and we can't solve it overnight.

So I think we're gonna have to with a lot of input prioritize what we want to do in the short term.

Uh we're not there yet, but I think there's a lot of safety improvements that we have heard, in particular for me, that I think people want to see address in the short term.

If I if, as I suspect it's the case that the small area plans that cross over this area are pretty much date from 1992.

Yes.

Um, I think it I think in the in the draft it would be helpful for you to make clear uh effectively which one of those which plan this plan or that plan controls with regard to any recommendations that code that overlap.

Yes, agreed.

Yes, Commissioner Dubai.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

You talked obviously the big theme, the safety and and the walkability and the biking through there, that's gonna be a a huge challenge.

And you spoke briefly about TENS's involvement, or or I wasn't quite clear what are they with you guys on this together, or they have their separate parallel path with what they're doing the streetscaping.

Can you talk a little more about that?

Sure.

So so one of the things that uh we are not revisiting as part of this process are the Duke Street and Motion improvements that were approved by council.

So that is not being discussed or revisited as part of this process.

I think one of the things we are discussing with our our test partners is what that streetscape looks like as we think about development or we think about land uses.

So there's opportunity for refinement on the streetscape, but in terms of the overall concept, we are we are not changing that as part of this process.

Um I'll just riff off of that real quick.

Um, in the opportunity sites, we see them here without a Duke Street transit way overlay.

Um nodes typically we're trying to concentrate more development.

You're we're trying to concentrate redevelopment on the opportunity sites because of the nature of of that analysis and what they're what they mean, but also in alignment with easy walkability to the the transit um asset that's going to be built out here.

Have have has that coordination begun to give a sense of because some of those may or may not easily align right now.

So one of the things uh we and I think we did have this on a graphic, um, and we should have it up there are the transit stops that are planned.

And I will say most of actually all of the opportunity sites are uh within walking distance of a transit stop.

And we should be showing that.

We certainly have been coordinating with Tess on that, so I apologize for that.

Um that is something we've been coordinating, and I I think it's also something as we're thinking about how we break up individual neighborhoods and walkability, like what is that five minute from the center neighborhood, what are the character defining elements of each of those neighborhoods as well.

Great.

Um I have a couple other questions I can ask.

Um beg my commissioners um indulgence.

And please put your little lights on and let me know if if people want to interrupt me because I'm not gonna take it off.

Yeah, it's the technical term.

Um I appreciate the idea that the small business area is one where we wouldn't target density increase because we're trying to preserve the level of affordability for the businesses to operate in those spaces.

I'm curious if discussion has begun on the potential displacement of small businesses from opportunity sites, and if that displacement, if there's if there's vacancy or opportunity in the small area focus area, small business focus areas for even interim relocation of some of those businesses to again keep people in community, keep their their business base intact, but but understanding that some of those opportunity sites will displace existing business.

I think that's a good point, and I think it's something worth putting in the plan because this is going to be phased over time.

Um I I'll also say that we looked a lot at the rents, and the rents in the retail center are higher than I thought they were going to be.

So I think a lot of the businesses are paying almost sort of new construction type rents.

So a lot of them will probably have the ability to go into new construction, not all.

So I think there might be a way to transition some of them into the new.

I I think the other thing we've talked about on the retail business front is because this came up a lot in the community discussions is we don't want to lose our grocery stores because those are community facilities, in my opinion.

And so I think as we think about this plan, how do we keep some of those big neighborhood serving anchors?

And we're gonna have to figure that out.

Commissioner Manor.

Um how could you clarify again?

How did you determine what opportunity sites meant?

So, yeah, so one of the things we did was uh uh uh one of the first things we did was look at where the transit facilities are, um, and then we looked at um where the existing affordable housing uh market rate affordable housing is uh and then we looked at things like impervious surface, uh we looked at things like size of the lots, um, and the the challenge here is how do we enable new development to happen and not displace existing affordable units.

That that was sort of where we ended up, and so this ability to build on parking lots, get rid of surface parking lots, which many of these um did not detain or treat water in the ways that they would today that all of you are very familiar with.

So it's addressing a lot of the goals that we heard from the community of again, these are all balancing.

Um it's not really right or wrong, it's sort of balancing all these principles that we started with with the community.

Okay, thank you.

Um I congratulate you all on wading into this because this is a this is a big one.

Um the affordability aspect, that's just market rates, right?

It's not marketing.

There are I know Tamara's here from housing, there are some committed units in Fox Chase, there are some committed units sort of up and down the corridor, but it's not at scale.

Um so I think I think the conversation here was in these sort of um affordability and growth areas, how do we get committed units?

Because I think as all of you know, the challenge is if we don't have committed units and there's market pressure, they're gonna increase the rents.

Uh that's just the way it's gonna be.

And so if we have committed units, we we know for sure these units are gonna be affordable for some period of time.

Yeah, surely.

I mean the plan is to make it nicer to get around.

Um if you could eliminate that backup of traffic that is always there, uh, right, especially at rush hour, uh, it'll become a much more pleasant place to live, and that would mean it's less affordable.

Um it strikes me that um the civic and city campus at what's the acreage of that again, please?

It's about 55 acres.

Okay, and it's a lot of parking lot.

It's a lot of parking lots, it's a lot of different uses, and so I think I think the challenge for us, and just to be clear, I think the challenge for us is how do we as a city as we're growing and changing, how do we build this is our only area to have functional things.

How do we build this is our only area to have functional things.

And salt domes and dump trucks aren't the most pleasant thing, but they are needed when we need them.

So how do how do we build that in and still weave it into a neighborhood?

So those are discussions we're still having.

Surely, and um, but it seems to me it's an opportunity for affordable housing dedicated, right?

Potentially.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Keenig.

Thank you.

Just to follow on Commissioner Manners uh focus on the the uh civic and city campus.

Um you mentioned uh a potential attempt to uh kind of develop and or integrate at least some portion of that that's a little bit more public-facing or public interactive at the same time that we maintain the functionality for the uh unglamorous but necessary pieces.

Do you have particular elements in mind for that forward-facing dimension of the civic campus?

I think short answer, not really.

I I think I I think one of the things that we've talked a little bit about, for example, we have the police facility.

Um could there be other uses that uh are also sort of public facing, and could the area adjacent to the rail corridor be the sort of heavier use things.

It's also farther away from uh other neighborhoods and noise uh isn't as much of an issue.

Topography is also sort of beneficial down there because is probably all of you know it gets lower as you get towards the rail corridor, but that's the extent of our conversation so far.

But but your concept opens up an exploration of that dimension, and I think that's really um a very intriguing aspect of your initial kind of conceptual approach.

I I just want to flag that I think this is a another interdepartmental work plan work item, the the civic and city campus plan once you guys get out of this larger plan because it's one of those things where kind of like I don't know, the way we do school planning, and we have an imp a city and schools infrastructure planning effort that happened, and we might need to redo um this is one where we're it would make sense to not to not just do it piecemeal, right?

But to think of of it as a follow-on step to the completion of the land use plan, that there's then a much more in-depth engagement with all of the internal stakeholders, um, and potentially all feeding into it the information you received out of this planning process about what the neighborhood needs, how the neighborhood already experiences these land uses in this area, and what neighbors of it might want to see in the future because there'll be a balancing act there as well.

Um, but I think it's a really interesting opportunity to preserve to preserve um certain types of of use, but also to to see them in different ways than we have before.

And I've I've biked through that campus to get to the police um station when we've met there, and it's funny where there is access that you don't even know exists.

Um, and when you're when you're on those alley stretches, you're seeing back of house activity that we think is back of house, but it's not necessarily a bad thing for the community to know that it's there and to see it operating and to see how we do the work we do.

Yeah, I agree, and I just to respond, you know, we are working with a lot of our departments right now, so I think we're trying to figure out um uh how specific we want to be, but also how flexible I think bike and ped connections you've been clear, the community's been clear that we want some porosity through that site, so we need to figure out how how we do that given the fact that there's a lot of functional things happening down there too.

So Commissioner, Commissioner Brown.

Well, the the namesake for this plan is Duke Street, and I I would like to hear a little more about Duke Street.

Um I may have asked this question before, but um is the my impression is that there may be some variation in the right-of-way width along Duke Street.

Is that right?

That's correct.

Have you thought about whether or not some adjustments, expansions of the right-of-way are appropriate anywhere?

So one of the things uh uh within the travel lanes and the transit way, no.

Uh that was a that was a process that uh multi-year process that was led by Tess went through the community, lots of folks weighed in that was approved by council.

I remember that.

Um, and so uh our goal is not to revisit that.

Um however, on the streetscape side, um, particularly in some of these opportunity areas, right-of-ways pretty constrained out there.

Um so I think one of the things we through this planning process is to figure out how we get more right-of-way to have safer bike and ped facilities, because uh I think all of you can probably think of five or six foot sidewalks that are immediately adjacent to the curb.

And so some of that's gonna change with the transitway improvements, some of that's gonna probably need to change when we get more right-away with redevelopment.

And so it's gonna be sort of a uh a phased approach of implementing these streetscape improvements.

Um, but I I think it's combination of both.

Some areas we actually have enough right away, others, others we don't.

Um, so we'll need to request more.

What is the status of the uh the wood or development project, the affordable housing project, right?

Where how far along are they?

Uh they have it framed.

Uh they're probably getting close to putting the skin on the building.

Uh they're probably, I don't know, Paul, a year away, roughly um from completion.

So perfect.

Um, so yeah, I they're they're well underway, and that streetscape, that curb to building, uh, is not gonna change.

I'm hoping I'm hoping for the best there because uh it's located in a in an area next to the uh the southbound telegraph, which is pretty congested every time I go by there.

So we shall see.

It challenging, yes.

Commissioner Ramirez.

Yes, it seems like every time that I had pushed a button, someone else no, Mr.

Brown had touched on a couple of the items that I was like, I was going to ask about like how does the small area plan right, how does it overlay, like what's the impact on the existing small area plans, and then of course, we talked, you know, you did mention how long Duke Street is and trying to create little moments, right, to allow a certain pause.

Um I can't help but feel it's like that the the big elephant here really is Duke Street itself.

It's such a kind of the size of it, right?

The speed at which people go along it is such a dividing factor um for the for the whole length of it.

Um and I I would be really curious to see whether or not developing some of these kind of focal nodes helps to temper some of that a little bit and bring on the human scale back into the street, which would be very exciting.

You know, one of the things, just to respond to that, one of the things that uh we've talked about with the community that I think is gonna be really important is we need more connectivity in in when redevelopment happens.

Right now, everyone has to go to one street, and that is Duke Street.

And so the challenge is you don't have options, and so one of the things we've been talking about with the community is um in this plan introducing more connectivity, bike pet and car.

And so if everyone has to be on the same street at the same time, that creates the challenge and safety and some of the aesthetic things that are happening.

So um I think Duke Street is a challenge today.

Um, you know, we do have some bigger streets in our city that uh I think work pretty well.

Um, I think I've used the example in some of our discussions of the transit way in front of Potomac Yard that I think works pretty well.

It fits in an urban setting, it's a bigger piece of street.

Um, but from someone who walks down that street a lot, it still feels pretty walkable.

And I think that's that's a lot of different things.

It's how the buildings engage with the street, it's the street trees, it's how the median's handled, it's lots you layer on these different things.

I think you can humanize a street that's a little more approachable.

And I think the challenge on Duke Street is um how do you phase that?

And I think Commissioner Brown brought this up earlier.

Like, how do we phase some of these improvements?

Because I think we all want to do lots of things right up front, and I think uh the money and our development is probably not gonna allow us to do that.

And so, how do we how do we pick priorities?

Commissioner Lanahan.

I have a couple really basic questions.

Um I realize when you look at the opportunity zones, um, what exactly does that mean in terms of um what does the city do in those places?

And um, and and also um just because I'm an architect thinking about building on some of these things.

Yes.

I mean, the the end there, that tail is very challenging.

Those are opportunity zones that are um quite that it would be difficult to actually put a workable building in there that you could get in and out of easily and make walkable and pedestrian accessible.

So I'm just curious about your concerns about those spaces.

Yeah, so good questions.

I think I think one of the things we are thinking about in the opportunity areas is most of those properties are pretty low commercial zoning today.

They're CSL, their 0.5.75 FARs, 35 feet.

And so one of the things we're thinking about is adding more density and height in those locations to accommodate development.

What that looks like, uh, we're not there yet.

Um I think in terms of um making sure all of these work.

I mean, one of the things we are gonna have to do is lay out these sites.

So one of the things I'm proud of is when we do a plan, we make sure it works.

And so making sure these sites accommodate a building, the streets were showing work, and so I think when hopefully when we do the next check-in with with the commission, uh, we'll say, well, this worked, we can put a street here, we can't put a street here, this has to be bike and pet or vice versa.

So we truth test all of these.

Uh so I'm pretty proud of that.

So when we bring things to the commission council, we know that conceptually it works.

I would just add that um with that tail, it's off the map here, but obviously the metro station is right there at that end, and so those are gonna be some of the more attractive sites potentially for redevelopment.

Um, so another reason to consider them as opportunities.

Yeah, good point.

Any other questions or comments from commissioners?

No, all right.

We really appreciate you coming tonight to give us this update.

Um, I had a lot of fun reviewing the presentation in advance, and um you know, 45 minutes belies the complexity of this corridor and how much more planning is ahead for the community.

Yes.

Um, I want to encourage planning commissioners to attend the meetings if you're not getting the the emails that go out for the planning process.

You can get make sure you're on those emailing lists.

But um there are some opportunities just coming up here in January, and then in February, if I recall, do you want to just go over with us real quick the engagement calendar in case anyone um can make it?

I know there were workshops in January, and then I think another open house coming up in February.

Yes.

Um we have uh community workshops happening on January 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and they're in the evening, and they're designed so that um you obviously don't go to all three.

You have the flexibility to find one that fits with your schedule.

Um then uh city council work session will be on January 27th, a similar um uh except it will be during the the legislative meeting, and then on February 25th, we currently have a hold for an upcoming meeting.

That one is still kind of loosely out there.

We don't have a location or uh uh more information about it yet, but that that would be the next option.

We also have a couple of business workshops, um, kind of similar to the community workshops in January, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, specifically targeted to those um business stakeholders I mentioned.

I I would also just add if if you have after this meeting, if you have questions, comments, you know how to reach myself or carry, so please do that.

And then I think the other thing, as we get more pen to paper, uh hopefully we can come back before the commission and share as well.

Great, thank you very much.

Um Ms.

Jacobs, we're about to enter our interlude between the work session and our hearing starting at seven in about nine minutes.

Yes.

Would it be okay if Ms.

Lyle spoke if you would like to?

Sure.

Awesome.

Yeah, so um begging forgiveness.

We have a um uh former planning commissioner um who would like to say a few words.

Ms.

Brown.

Thank you so much.

Oh thank you so much for all of your years of service to this commission.

I truly enjoyed working with you and exchanging um our different analysis of multiple plans and projects.

While we agreed sometimes, often we had differing views, but it's really important for a commission such as this, that everyone does their own in-depth analysis and is willing to not only discuss it but defend it so that we get the best possible plans and projects for this city.

So again, thank you for all of the hours you've put in through the years.

It was a pleasure serving with you.

Thank you.

That's a very strong endorsement of the word diversity, the first word in DEI.

And I'm very much in favor of diversity of opinion because, as I've said before, giving the city council recommendations that fully explore diverse opinions is the most helpful way to be of service service to them.

And thank you.

I do have one more month to go though.

I know, but I won't be here in February.

So I wanted to take this opportunity and thank you, Chair McMahon.

Thank you.

All right, everybody.

Meet us back here at seven, and we'll start the next event.