Blog posts are the personal views of Letty Hardi and not official statements or records on behalf of the Falls Church City Council

Dear Friends,

Besides discussion in our work session about parking code changes, our 2 year priorities and work plan, and brick sidewalks — this week, the long-awaited news about the anchor grocery store at West Falls (the 10 acre project adjacent to the secondary schools campus) was shared. Believe it or not – parking, grocery stores, and sidewalks are among the most polarizing topics I field! I’d welcome your thoughts as you read on.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) What’s Old Is New Again – The Fresh Market is Coming to Falls Church

The Fresh Market will be one of the anchor tenants at the West Falls project, right at the corner of Rt 7 and Haycock at the former site of the high school. I know, I know – another grocery store! This will be the 7th grocer in Falls Church (here: Giant, Harris Teeter, Aldi, Good Fortune, and then later: Whole Foods, Bargain Market, and The Fresh Market).

Food deserts are a very real issue elsewhere, so we are fortunate to have so many options for our residents and adjacent neighbors. Grocery stores do their own analysis on their markets before deciding on locations and they clearly draw from a population far beyond the city’s 2.2 square miles. As for the city’s own internal data – so far we have not seen a cannibalization of sales among the four current grocery stores and they have been one of the most resilient categories of retail uses even as shopping preferences have shifted more to online.

Did you know that 70% of the city lives within a 10 minute walk to a grocery store? (We’ll need to update the stat and the slide below soon!) As we continue evolving to a more vibrant, walkable community – being able to meet one’s everyday, essential needs within walking distance is an important component.

For those with long memories – yes, before the now shuttered Baby Target, The Fresh Market was the original anchor tenant at the Tinner Hill building on S. Washington/S. Maple and even had a signed lease. But in 2015/2016, TFM was bought by private equity and pulled back on all of their expansion efforts during that time, withdrawing from the Tinner Hill project.

(2) Parking Requirements

We had an in depth discussion about amending commercial parking requirements to reduce barriers facing small business owners and support adaptive reuse of existing buildings. Parking is a wonky, complicated topic, so if you”re interested in diving deeper, I encourage you to review the staff report and the supporting documents posted online.

A quick summary of the issue and the recommendation in front of us:

• A common barrier for new small businesses, especially in older buildings with small footprints, is high parking requirements. Older commercial building stock is an important option for small, independent businesses because they have lower rents. And if we want to keep these buildings occupied and viable (rather than vacant which often makes them a prime candidate for redevelopment – and I personally believe it’s important to have a mix of sizes and ages of buildings for a more interesting, authentic city), we want to reduce the barriers for these small businesses.
• Rather than a modernization of our entire parking code, which is probably still warranted as it’s quite outdated – staff has proposed an incremental change to the commercial parking requirements to offer more flexibility for the smallest tenants.
• Up for discussion is to relieve the first 1000 square feet of commercial uses from the parking requirements calculations. Note: increasing to 1200 square feet has also been recommended by the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Authority so we are considering that as well.
  • For example, if a business is 2500 square feet, they would need to provide parking for 1500 square feet (2500 – 1000 = 1500).
  • There are also various exclusions – it can’t be in a shopping center where shared parking occurs or be in a project where there is already a parking management plan or transportation demand management plan.
• Besides supporting small businesses and adaptive reuse, there are also environmental sustainability benefits to reducing parking requirements, including encouraging alternative modes of transportation from driving and less hardscape surface parking built contributing to stormwater runoff.

One of the top misconceptions I field is that Falls Church has a parking shortage. This is not true. There have been multiple parking utilization studies done on my time on City Council, with the most recent parking study done in January/February 2020 that that during weekday peak hours between 3:00 PM and 5:00 PM, 52% of the study area spaces were occupied. Despite certain “hot spot” areas where parking use exceeded an occupancy rate of 85%, the findings suggest that there is adequate parking supply for current demand, with excess parking available nearby even during peak use hours. And the study was done before we expanded the agreement with the Kaiser garage to weekday evening and all day weekend use and improved wayfinding signage to public parking around the city. The main challenge in the city is not to build more parking, but to help drivers navigate to the available spaces – whether that’s garages, surface lots, or on-street public parking spaces.

And as we keep investing in alternative modes of transportation infrastructure like sidewalks and bike routes, we make it easier for residents and visitors to get here and get around without a car, freeing up parking for others who drive.

This is also good time to plug the public parking around the city: there are 380 existing public parking spaces in the Kaiser and George Mason Square garages and an additional 64 public spaces are in the Broad and Washington garage, that just opened last week for public use. Additionally, there are 121 spaces in the public lots around City Hall and between N. Maple Avenue and N. Washington Street.

(3) Brick Sidewalks

Among the City Council priorities for the 2024-2025 term, one long-discussed item is revisiting our streetscape standards, specifically the use of brick in crosswalks and sidewalks.

(Quick background: streetscape standards were a big accomplishment in 2016/2017 – as it was the first time we established requirements for new developments, so we could have a unified look and feel to our streets, provide for wider sidewalks with deeper setbacks from the buildings, and have standard amenities such as garbage/recycling cans, benches, bike racks, street lights, etc. For the most part, streetscape standards have been great in setting expectations with new projects and leading to a more consistent, accessible streetscape for community and economic activity.)

One common piece of feedback we receive is that brick becomes especially slippery in winter icy weather because it traps more water than concrete or asphalt. Not to mention that brick is more costly to maintain and replace. As such, City Council has been pushing staff to explore alternatives – either brick-like stamped concrete, pavers, concrete, or a combination that can still create a unique streetscape that brands the city but with less accessibility or maintenance issues.

Ahead of any formal changes, there is a pilot crosswalk installed using stamped concrete (to simulate the look of brick) at S Oak and Broad that Rosie and I checked out this week. Have you seen or walked it?

What are your thoughts on keeping brick sidewalks or other alternatives?

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, July 22 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, August 5 – City Council Work Session*

Wednesday, August 7 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

Monday, August 12 – City Council Meeting*

*Mondays (except 5th Mondays and holidays) at 7:30 pm. You can access the agenda and livestream here, including recordings of past meetings