Good evening, Rockville.

Today is Wednesday, April 9th, 2025.

This is meeting number 4-25 of the City of Rockville Planning Commission.

I am Jamie Espinosa, Chair of the Planning Commission.

I am joined by Commissioner Susan Pittman, Eric Fulton, Cheyenne Saladin, and virtually by Commissioner Mengsun.

Tonight's meeting is being conducted in person and virtually by WebEx.

Tonight's agenda includes one review and action item, which includes waiver application WAV 2025-00013, one briefing, briefing on project plan PJT 2025-00021.

And this will be followed by a regularly scheduled commission items.

Our first agenda item, as I said, is waiver application WAV 2025-00013 to permit a reduction of 44 parking spaces at 1251 West Montgomery Avenue, located in the MXE mixed use employment zone, Rockville Motel Association's LLC, Care of Jeff Wildler applicants.

Over to Mr.

Waselak for any staff presentation.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair and members of the Commission.

This is a parking waiver for the Best Western Hotel on West Montgomery Avenue.

Per Our Code, you are the approving authority for such waivers.

And senior planner Chris Davis is here to make the staff presentation.

And I will swear him in.

If you could identify yourself for the record.

And will you provide truthful testimony this evening?

I will.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair and members of the commission.

As Mr.

Wasselek indicated, this is a parking waiver application for the Best Western Hotel and Restaurant at 1251 West Montgomery Avenue.

As you can see outlined in red on the screen, the property is located at 1251 West Montgomery Avenue.

The land use designation is Office Commercial Residential Mix, and the zoning for the property is mixed use employment.

The site is approximately 4.8 acres in size.

And the specific request is a waiver to permit a reduction of 44 required parking spaces.

And the staff recommendation is approval of the requested waiver.

So for some brief background on this property, uh, the uh existing hotel and accessory restaurant use was approved by the planning commission back in 1968.

Uh since that time, several several subsequent approvals have been completed on the property for minor improvements and uh updated in uses on the site.

Umce that period, um, there have been periods where the accessory restaurant has not been in use on the site.

However, that changed in 2020 in 2020 when the planning commission approved a waiver of 29 parking spaces to re-establish the accessory restaurant as part of an accessor as a as part of an associated minor site plan amendment.

As you can see on the screen, this is the subject property with the uh improved hotel and the restaurant area.

Oh, sorry.

The restaurant area is located in this one-story edition.

So the proposal by the applicant is to change the or modify the uses on the site from an accessory restaurant, which currently exists, to a full service restaurant.

Uh, as part of this change of use, it also requires an addition and parking uh for the required uses, uh, specifically 44 additional parking spaces.

Uh the applicant requests an 18.5% reduction in the required number of spaces to continue use of the hotel and new full service restaurant with the existing 194 spaces currently existing on site.

As you can see from the site plan shown on the screen, the hotel building is shown in red with the surrounding parking areas in brown.

Here's a proposed uh interior floor plan of the modifications proposed by the applicant.

Um, including in those are slight increases to the floor area from 4700 square feet to 5500 square feet.

Also included uh as part of the adjustments are our relocation of the front entry doors.

Um, and you can see those on the planned west.

So, in terms of the specific requests, uh the zoning ordinance uh does allow per section 251603 for the planning commission to permit reductions in the required number of parking spaces for uses in the building when located in certain zones as shown on the screen if meeting uh specific criteria.

And again, the specific request is to provide 190 parking, 194 parking spaces on the site in lieu of the required 238 associated with the change in use.

So for the specific analysis and reviewing this application, staff has found that the application meets two of the six criteria to grant a parking reduction.

Uh, with respect to the first criteria, criteria A.

Uh, this uh criteria has not been met, but it's not applicable because the site is located well beyond the distance of a metro station.

In regards to criteria B, staff does find that this criteria has been met.

Um specifically, there are three ride-on bus routes within a quarter mile of the site uh corresponding to routes 45, 54, and 63.

Uh criteria C regarding uh proximity to a public parking facility.

Um this criteria is not met as there are no public parking facilities within a thousand feet of the site.

Regarding criteria Dise of the property, this criteria is also not met as the site is well beyond um limited at approximately 4.08 4.0 acres.

Um and criteria E, dealing with the proximity of bikeways.

Um, while bicycle uh facilities do exist near the site, um, staff has not found that uh the uses proposed are conducive to bicycle use.

But uh specifically for criteria F, staff has found that this criteria has been met.

Um, specifically in looking at the history of this particular property, um, the on-site restaurant use has been existing without parking deficiencies.

Additionally, the previously approved parking waiver has been in place for several years, and there has been no evidence of any adverse impacts from that parking waiver.