CSG Testimony: Comments in Support of West Falls Church Redevelopment Plan

June 15, 2021 Fairfax County Planning Commission 12000 Government Center Parkway Fairfax, VA 22035 RE: Comments in Support of West Falls Church plan amendment PA 2018-II-1M Chairman Murphy and Commissioners: My name is Stewart Schwartz, and I am the Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Our Northern Virginia Advocacy Manager, Sonya Breehey, is on vacation and unable to attend this evening. Sonya is a resident of Fairfax County who lives a 15-minute bike ride from the West Falls Church Station. She attended most of the task force meetings.

CSG advocates for walkable, bikeable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the Washington, DC region to grow and provide opportunities for all. For nearly 25 years since our founding by the region’s leading conservation groups, we have helped the region work toward a vision for a network of transitoriented communities, a vision committed to by Fairfax County and endorsed by all 23 jurisdictions in the Council of Governments’ Region Forward plan and supporting plans. It is a vision shared by the conservation community, affordable housing, bike/ped and transit advocates, and much of the business community.

We support the West Falls Church TSA – with recommendations. We are signatories to the joint supportive comments submitted by leading conservation and housing groups in the Fairfax Healthy Communities Network – which you have in your packet. In addition to CSG, the signatories are Audubon Naturalist Society, Northern VA Affordable Housing Alliance, Sierra Club – Great Falls Group, Friends of Holmes Run, and Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions.

For disclosure – among CSG’s donors and supporters is EYA – one of the prospective developers, who provides less than 1% of our annual budget for our small organization. Our revenues come 55% from charitable foundations, 27% from individuals and 18% from a range of development, architecture, transportation, and planning firms. To be clear, from our founding we made TOD the center of our advocacy and we conduct objective reviews of all plans and projects.

We are strong supporters of mixed-use redevelopment of the acres of parking lots at West Falls Church because transit-oriented communities are a central strategy for reducing per capita and regional vehicle miles traveled, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Walkable, transitaccessible communities offer places where people can live, work, and play while driving less and walking, biking, and using transit more. They are in high demand among the next generations as well as downsizing empty nesters, and are an important economic development PO Box 73282 | 2000 14th Street NW | Washington, DC 20009

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strategy for attracting modern tech firms and generating more tax yield per acre. We should be focusing Metro ridership growth strategies on people living and working adjacent to Metro and that is exactly what WMATA is trying to do. Their Connect Greater Washington study showed that TOD would result in Metro being used all day in both directions reducing taxpayer operating subsidies.

We believe the plan is good, with reuse of the parking garage, mix-of-uses, range of housing types, and inclusion of 10% of rental and 15% of for-sale units as affordable. This is more than the recently updated WDU policy requires. Of course, we always encourage more.

We urge you to retain the Virginia Tech development plan – both the street network components and the full development envelope, particularly because the total development proposed for the full site is lower than it should be for a valuable Metro station.

Much of the expressed concerns from the community are about potential traffic, and safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.

As our region grows, it is TOD like West Falls Church which ensures that new and relocating residents can drive less. In contrast, pushing development away would mean residents would have to drive for every trip and drive longer distances, cutting through the greater Falls Church community. And to be honest, it is our single-family homes that generate more vehicle trips per capita per day per unit than units in TOD. At every Metro station in our region where development is proposed, we see neighbors in opposition – everyone saying put the homes somewhere else. That can’t work. We are one of the most economically successful regions in the world – to handle our growth in a sustainable way, we must prioritize walkable, transit-oriented development.

As part of the TOD at West Falls Church, reducing parking and including requirements for strong transportation demand management plans will further reduce driving. These can include pricing the parking separate from the units, employer transit passes, transit passes for new residents, and marketing emphasizing car-light living.

The development provides good internal circulation including the key main street parallel to Haycock Road, as well as sidewalk improvements on the perimeter. We concur with the Planning Commissioners about application of modern urban street design standards.

We join the local community, MCA, and Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling urging inclusion of the West Falls Church Active Transportation Plan in the motion approving the CPA, and rapid development of that plan. Amid the terrible spate of pedestrian and cyclist deaths and serious injuries in Fairfax the county needs to prioritize redesign of its streets to make them safer for all vulnerable users.

To be clear – most safety problems on the surrounding roads exist today and will not be made worse by the redevelopment, and this redevelopment is good impetus to finally make safety improvements. Also to be clear, CSG did a walking tour of this area a couple of years ago – focusing on Haycock and Route 7 and problems along Shreve Road. One of about 100 walking tours we’ve given over the past decade – looking at urban design, street design and safety, affordable housing and other issues.

Route 7, Haycock, and connecting neighborhood streets should all be redesigned as complete streets with bike lanes – especially protected bike lanes, improved sidewalks, safer crosswalks including bump-outs, and designs that ensure safe speeds of 20 mph or lower on neighborhood streets, and for the arterials, ideally 25 mph in this urban location.

We continue to argue against major road widening and double left turns and in favor of local street networks like that proposed at this Metro station. We also argue that instead of Fairfax funding so many road widenings the county should shift funding to prioritize transit station bike/ped investment packages. Doing so would be part of a TOD-first strategy to reduce overall driving. To be frank, active transportation studies, plans and investments like the one proposed here should be priorities for every transit hub, every school, library and community center, and every commercial hub and corridor.

In summary, we support the West Falls Church TSA and urge swift action to make the streets that surround the Metro station site safer for local residents, bicyclists, pedestrians, and transitusers. The other imperative is the urgent need to address climate change by slashing our emissions from transportation. Let’s put TOD first. Thank you.

PO Box 73282 | 2000 14th Street NW | Washington, DC 20009

smartergrowth.net

202-675-0016