Category: CSG in the News

Valedictorian of the creative class?

Posted on by Tyler Sanders

Richard Florida, a best-selling author and urban-studies scholar, teaches in Toronto, one of 20 contenders for Amazon’s $5 billion second headquarters.
But since the competition for Amazon HQ2 began last fall, “I’ve predicted that the D.C. area would be the winner,” says Florida, a former professor at George Mason University. “The reason is that the metro area has one of the highest concentrations of knowledge workers, educated workers, creative workers on the planet. I don’t know if it’s going to go to Northern Virginia, Maryland or D.C. but I clearly think it’s going to head in your direction.”
Florida is widely known for his ideas about the “creative class.” Under that concept, metro areas need to attract large numbers of highly skilled and talented workers to stimulate economic development.
The second Amazon headquarters is expected to create 50,000 jobs during the next 15 to 17 years. Stephen Moret, president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, describes the project as the “economic prize of the century.” The Washington, D.C., metro area is the only one to have three contenders still in the running for HQ2: the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Md. The Washington Post reported that Amazon officials toured the Washington area in early March.
Jim Corcoran, president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, believes Northern Virginia’s workforce talent is crucial to its efforts to beat out the 19 other contenders. “Our area has the most educated workforce in the United States,” he says.
Corcoran praises what is “maybe the greatest community college system in the United States,” adding that Northern VirginiCommunity College and George Mason University have strong cybersecurity programs.
According to The Washington Post, Amazon is considering these Northern Virginia locations for its headquarters:
Property on Fairfax/Loudoun county line (now occupied by the Center for Innovative Technology) near Washington Dulles International Airport; The Crystal City/Potomac Yard area; and Potomac Shores and Innovation Park in Prince William County.
Virginia has not released information about any possible incentives being offered to Amazon. District of Columbia officials have said they are willing to offer significant tax breaks but have not released any details. Maryland, on the other hand, is promising a $5 billion incentive package in its bid.
The Achilles’ heel The contrasting approaches of the three Washington-area contenders point to what Florida sees as their Achilles’ heel, a lack of collaboration. “That does not exist, which is reflected in the fact that there are three bids,” Florida says. “The region has to grow up and figure out how to work together.”
That lack of cooperation has contributed to the region’s “gridlock nightmare,” Florida says. “If you have to get anywhere in a car, a metro area starts to break down when you have 5 or 6 million people. You’ve got to grow differently and add density, like London or New York. This is not a place that is going to grow any more based on cars.”
Corcoran, however, argues that Northern Virginia “has great transportation, but not perfect transportation … That’s the result of the dynamic economy because people want to be there and are going places. Traffic is an indication of prosperity.”
Virginia has made significant investments in transportation in Northern Virginia in the past decade and continues to invest, he says, with new HOT lanes and improvements to Interstates 66 and 95 and Routes 7 and 28. “Everything that can be fixed is being fixed or improved.”
The new Silver Line extension of the Metrorail transit system and more regional buses also are signs of the region’s commitment to untangling the area’s transportation system, Corcoran says. “This area doesn’t have to say we will invest in mass transportation for Amazon; we’ve done it.”
But delays, safety concerns and a drop in ridership continue to plague the subway system. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority says it needs an annual $500 million infusion of capital funding from Virginia, Maryland and the District.  In March, the Virginia General Assembly approved $154 million in new permanent funding for Metro, By late March, Maryland and the District had approved similar funding.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, says three jurisdictions have shown a commitment to making  improvements.
“We are seeing positive movement. We are finding new dedicated funding,” Schwartz says. “They have been talking to each other. Yes, indeed, they are working closely together. I think that has been noted by Amazon” and by other corporations that have chosen to move into the area, such as Nestlé, which recently moved its U.S. headquarters to Rosslyn.
The subway system also remains a key part of the region’s commitment to be bike and pedestrian friendly, Schwartz says, an initiative that makes it attractive to a millennial workforce.
Room to build Northern Virginia still offers plenty of room to build, for office space and housing, says CoStar Group market analyst Omeed Naderi. He points to Tysons and Reston as two of the most active housing development areas.
Julian Spiker, also a market analyst at CoStar, says there’s also room for Amazon in the Crystal City area. “Crystal City has a lot of older office space. JBG Smith owns a lot of space and has already committed to revitalization whether or not Amazon moves there. It’s a good opportunity. One has what the other needs.”
Plus, the area will have a new Metro stop at Potomac Yard, which is expected to open in 2021.
The extension of the Silver Line Metro along the Dulles corridor, with stations from Reston Town Center to Ashburn expected to open in 2020, is perfectly timed, says Dee Owens, an associate broker with RE/MAX Gateway in Virginia. “Amazon can pull talent from farther out.”
Owens worked in real estate in Seattle during the Amazon boom and calls the experience “wonderful preparation for what I hope is going to come to us.”
One lesson she learned is that Northern Virginia will need investors in rental properties. Some of those 50,000 jobs Amazon is promising will be high paying, Owens says, “but a lot will be jobs for people right out of college, and they’ll want to rent at first.”
Seattle built a satellite campus, she notes, which could be good news for Prince William County. “A satellite would make good business sense. You could pull in people from Gainesville and Haymarket. People will travel up to an hour to a job. If you pay enough they will go.”
If not NoVa? If Amazon picks Maryland or the District for its headquarters, Northern Virginia still will reap plenty of rewards, Florida says, because “a ton of residents will choose to live in Northern Virginia. There will be benefits without some of the cost. If I were Northern Virginia, I’d be hoping for one of the others and get the spillover benefits.”
Corcoran agrees that Northern Virginia will benefit if one of its neighbors is the winner.
In fact, he sees great possibilities if any one of the three areas takes the prize. Those possibilities include extending the Purple Line light rail from Maryland into Virginia or adding another bridge across the Potomac River.
“That could be the impetus to improved transportation cooperation. Right now, that stops at the river,” he says. “Maybe it would force a conversation and evaluation to improve regional mobility.”

Read the original article here.

D.C.’s Plan For Future Growth Fails Low-Income Residents, Activists Say

Posted on by Erin Phillips

Nearly 300 people signed up to testify before the D.C. Council Tuesday on what might sound like an obscure subject: the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

More than just a turgid government document, the plan is a roadmap for the District’s future development. It establishes the city’s guiding principles over the next 20 years for land use, economic development, environmental protection, transportation and beyond. But as officials prepare to update the roadmap for the first time in seven years, some activists and nonprofit groups worry the process is steering the city toward a less equitable future.

The Office of Planning has proposed a slew of updates to the plan’s framework — the guiding document that sets the tone for the rest of the plan — and most haven’t attracted much controversy. But at a hearing at the Wilson Building on March 20, two points in particular had witnesses fired up: They said the plan doesn’t make a sincere commitment to preserving and building more affordable housing, and that it makes it much harder for residents to appeal development they believe could worsen gentrification.

“The agencies and the city are not really working to make sure that the displacement crisis is addressed,” said Empower DC Executive Director Parisa Norouzi outside the hearing. “Are we building exclusive communities for wealthier single people? Yes, we are. Is that what we should be doing, given evidence of the need that exists in the city? No.”

In its proposed updates, the Office of Planning mentions affordability multiple times. For example, one new passage reads, “The degree to which the District’s family-sized housing stock can be retained or expanded, and remain affordable is … critical.” But many say the updates fall short of a real pledge to keep low-income people in their homes.

Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, says the District could mitigate displacement by investing more in the D.C. Local Rent Supplement Program and Housing Production Trust Fund (although a recent audit alleges the fund is seriously mismanaged). But above all, she says, the city must build more places for people to live.

“We need more housing to keep up with demand,” Cort said Monday, “so we can hold down rising prices that are caused by not having enough supply.”

That’s where groups like Empower DC and the Coalition for Smarter Growth diverge. Affordable-housing advocates have chosen to battle gentrification by stopping development in its tracks, a strategy critics dismiss as short-sighted. Activist Chris Otten, who heads the group D.C. for Reasonable Development, has been particularly successful at appealing projects in federal court, miring developers in red tape for months. In some cases, he’s managed to block development altogether, successfully arguing that certain projects violate the Comprehensive Plan. One legal dispute with an Adams Morgan hotel developer didn’t stop the hotel from being built, but it won a group of residents, led by Otten, a $2 million settlement.

Norouzi says taking developers to court is the most effective way to put power back in the public’s hands. “The reason why people are appealing is because nobody’s looking out for the residents,” she said.

The string of legal challenges has struck fear into the hearts of developers, but it hasn’t stopped development altogether. Now some builders are choosing to circumvent the public process — called Planned Unit Development — that makes them vulnerable to appeals. The move is creating unintended consequences, observers say.

The city relies on the PUD process to extract better community amenities from developers, such as more affordable units than are legally required. D.C. Planning Director Eric Shaw has said that PUDs produced 2,530 affordable units in FY 2017, 19 percent of all new apartments built that year.

The last thing housing advocates should want, says David Alpert of nonprofit Greater Greater Washington, is to prevent residents from striking better deals with developers.

“The recent court decisions, some of them call into question whether any community benefits agreement can be negotiated, agreed to, and then enforced without someone simply bringing a lawsuit and trying to overturn the entire thing,” Alpert said.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Alpert criticized activists’ tactics as “filibustering,” and voiced his support for a proposed update to the Comprehensive Plan that would protect the Planned Unit Development process from being hijacked.

“A few people can delay or halt even something which has had robust community input and support,” Alpert said at the hearing. “Is a land-use system, where no matter the community support, anything can be filibustered, really good government?”

But while witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing didn’t agree on how D.C. government should control skyrocketing housing prices, they concurred that the city is in the midst of an affordability crisis that the Comprehensive Plan must address. That idea found support among Council members who spoke before the hearing.

“The Comprehensive Plan has potential to impact the cost of housing, incomes and other things that could lead to displacement,” said Ward 5 Council member Kenyan McDuffie, “and government has a responsibility to minimize displacement at all costs.”

The Council took no decisive action Tuesday, and lawmakers expect to negotiate changes to the planning document in the coming months.

Read the full story here.

Expect Crowds at Tuesday’s Hearing on Proposed Amendments to D.C.’s Comprehensive Plan

Posted on by Erin Phillips

More than 270 people have signed up to testify at a D.C. Council hearing on Tuesday afternoon. The topic: Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed amendments to D.C.’s Comprehensive Plan, the thick planning bible that guides how tall and dense new construction should be throughout the District.

Drafted by the mayor’s Office of Planning (OP), the initial 60 pages of amendments would make it easier for developers to construct large projects and withstand a court appeals process that has paralyzed several projects.

Since late January, a loose coalition has mobilized to fight these amendments. They call themselves the Grassroots Planning Coalition and their tagline is “Stop the #ComprehensiveScam.” In their view, the proposed changes to the plan would be a coup for pro-smart growth urbanists and the developer class.

This election cycle, the Coalition hopes to tap into voter anger over displacement and offer an alternative to their perceived enemies, an urbanist bloc that tends to support more development. On their side are lefty candidates like Jeremiah Lowery, who is challenging At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds. Lowery peppers his speeches with disdain for millionaire developers.

The Coalition’s strategizing meetings have drawn intrepid zoning wonks, street organizers, and historic preservationists. Together, its members, in their own words, aim to counterbalance the power of developers over public officials.

“They have their foot on the Wilson Building,” said David Schwartzman, a perennial D.C. Council candidate from the D.C. Statehood Green Party, at a March 10 strategizing meeting in Anacostia. He recited a dizzying list of foes, starting with the “big banks” and “big developers” and ending with the Federal City Council, the D.C. Policy Center, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Greater Greater Washington.

“This whole thing was supposed to be an amendments cycle, and OP approached it as a whole rewrite,” says Stephen Hansen, chair of the Committee of 100. Founded in 1923, the Committee of 100 is a longtime guard of D.C.’s Height Act and often engages in historic preservation and nitty-gritty zoning policy issues. In terms of taking on the mayor this time around, Hansen says: “I would say it’s one of our stronger stances historically.”

“The Committee tends to be more policy-orientated. The advantage to our joining this coalition is that it’s a more grassroots reach,” he explains. “It’s a good symbiotic relationship.”

The coalition is chiefly worried that the amendments would weaken their hand in appealing development projects. Amid the District’s development boom, those well-schooled in the Comprehensive Plan have successfully slowed down projects through the D.C. Court of Appeals, which has become a thorn in the side of developers and city planning officials.

In the telling of the Committee and their allies, developers and the D.C. Zoning Commission ignored the Comprehensive Plan for years, even as the Home Rule Act mandates that zoning should “not be inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan.”

Local activists like Chris Otten, who is part of a group called DC for Reasonable Development, began appealing projects to the D.C. Court of Appeals. These appeals tend to rest on arguments that the Zoning Commission did not adequately address the potential ripple effects of a given large development project: its effects on the environment, displacement, and the most vulnerable existing residents.

Otten’s big break came in December 2016, when the appeals court tossed out the Zoning Commission’s approval of the giant redevelopment proposal at the McMillan Sand Filtration site. The court ruled that “the project is inconsistent with the District’s Comprehensive Plan”—music to the ears for types like Otten. The precedent paved the way for over a dozen other appeals to the federal court, which have resulted in delays for major projects.

Now, Otten and opponents of the mayor’s amendments say developers over the past two years have proposed rewriting the Comprehensive Plan to avoid legal tangles. (The Office of Planning received more than 3,000 public submissions for amendments to the plan.) Through wordsmithing, critics say, the plan has been loosened to allow open interpretation.

“It’s not eliminating our rights to appeal. We will be able to appeal a decision in the future. But we don’t have any teeth,” Otten said at a meeting of the Grassroots Planning Coalition on March 10. “We go into the court, and they’ll just laugh us out of there, because they’re weakening [the Comprehensive Plan], fuzzy-ing it.”

While Otten and other complainants profess they are acting in the interests of keeping neighborhoods affordable, smart-growth proponents call the appeals obstruction. Yet worse, many city planners and developers say the throttling of residential development has exacerbated the crisis of affordability in D.C.

“When we hold up all housing, we hold up affordable housing,” said Eric Shaw, director of the Office of Planning, at a Feb. 28 D.C. Council oversight meeting. “That’s the truth.”

***

While the Grassroots Planning Coalition sees the city’s pro-smart-growth bloc as in bed with developers, the two sides have similar goals on paper. David Alpert, founder and president of Greater Greater Washington, says he shares concerns that OP’s amendments don’t adequately address affordable housing and displacement.

“We were also disappointed with the amendments that were created,” Alpert says. GGWworked with over a dozen groups to come up with a package of proposals for the Comprehensive Plan.

That coalition released a 43-page “DC Housing Priorities” paper, advocating for the “creation and preservation of a supply of housing (market-rate and subsidized affordable) to meet the demand at all income levels.” Alpert emphasizes that the city needs to push for more housing for those making 30 percent and 50 percent of the area median income, or between $33,000 and $55,150 a year for a family of four.

“There needs to be a really strong focus on affordable housing and displacement,” Alpert says, which sounds a lot like the talking points of the Grassroots Planning Coalition.

When asked about the opportunity for common ground, Hansen sounded tired. “I don’t want to put my energy in talking about them,” the Committee of 100 chair says. “It looks like we have common goals, but how we hope to reach them is very different avenues.”

Hansen sees Alpert and his allies as adherents of Reagonimcs and the “build, baby build” mentality, with hopes that the free market will one day help lower-income residents. “It failed in the ’80s, and it would fail with housing as well,” Hansen says. (Alpert says, “We’re not people who say, ‘Merely loosening rules will on its own bring down prices.’ I don’t believe that’s the case.”)

Another division exists between the two sides on Planned Unit Developments, known as PUDs. These development projects undergo community review through Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and require Zoning Commission approval. Developers typically file for PUDs to ask for permission to build greater density than what is allowed by-right on a lot.

In exchange for exemptions from zoning rules, the developers will offer public benefits, which can include more affordable housing than what is required by law or other concessions to the community. Shaw testified to the D.C. Council that “nearly 6,000 affordable housing units” have been approved through PUDs over the past five years—3,500 more than what zoning regulations alone would have required. The whole PUD process can run over a year, with ANCs sometimes negotiating with developers for a favorable public benefits package.

Otten has filed about a dozen appeals of PUDs that the Zoning Commission has approved, arguing that they in some way don’t adhere to the Comprehensive Plan. He now says the proposed amendments are “attacking the ability of the people to hold the Zoning Commission accountable.”

Alpert calls it a course correction. “The changes being proposed just try to realign the PUD process with the way it worked before,” Alpert says. But he adds he wants a greater focus on prioritizing affordable housing and displacement, which OP’s amendments don’t yet address.

Eyes now turn to the D.C. Council and to its chairman. Over his term, Phil Mendelson has earned a reputation as a legislative reengineer, taking many of the mayor’s bills and redoing them along points of consensus. (See: the mayor’s homeless shelter plan.) But he demurs on whether he’ll turn the Comprehensive Plan edits into a personal project. “I take seriously every bill that we move and mark up,” he says dryly.

Mendelson does have his early worries. “I am concerned whether the bill goes too far in making the plan more vague and therefore less useful,” he says. “I think the Office of Planning shot itself in the foot promising 60 days of public comment before submitting the bill, and it didn’t do that.”

OP originally planned for a public comment period after releasing their proposed amendments in January, but reversed after receiving 10 times the anticipated number of public proposals, Shaw told the D.C. Council. The proposed changes on the table deal with the Framework Element of the Comprehensive Plan, the introduction section of the 1,000-page document. Public submissions for changes to the other sections of the plan are still under review.

“The city’s gonna grow, and that’s a good thing,” Mendelson says. “And I’ve never known of any city that’s turned people away”—exactly what some critics are not shy to suggest should happen. At the February meeting of the Grassroots Planning Coalition, Otten flatly asked: “Fundamentally, the question for our city is, do we want a million people?”

Activists like Parisa Norouzi, the executive director of community organizing outfit Empower DC, aren’t betting on help from the Wilson Building. “Whether or not we’re aligned on all the points, it’s yet to be seen,” she says of Mendelson, before calling him one of the most knowledgeable councilmembers on the Comprehensive Plan. “We’re used to taking on hard fights and having not many allies on the Council.”

Meanwhile, Ed Lazere, who is running against Mendelson this year, says: “If I were chair, I would make sure the Comp Plan update is really clear about preservation and creation of affordable housing.” Lazere is on leave as the head of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.

“The current leadership, as reflected in the Comp Plan,” Lazere says, “it prioritizes the wishes of big developers over the needs of hardworking families.”

Read the full story here.

Dozens of developers will testify next week before the D.C. Council. Here’s why they are upset.

Posted on by Erin Phillips

Dozens of developers and other pro-business advocates will testify before the D.C. Council on Tuesday to voice concerns about the volume of appeals that have tied up projects in litigation.

They will push for changes to the city’s comprehensive plan that would clarify land use rules regarding planned-unit developments, make it easier for developers to expedite projects and lower the number of legal challenges developers face. Roughly two dozen projects, from the Union Market area to McMillan, have faced legal hurdles despite prior zoning approval.

“As a developer and as someone who works for one of the world’s largest commercial real estate developers in the city, I am very concerned about the frequency with which these appeals are happening,” said Adam Weers, a principal with Trammell Crow Co., one of three companies, along with EYA and Jair Lynch Real Estate, co-developing the 25-acre McMillan site into a mix of office, residential and retail. “There were three in 2015, there were two or three in 2016. There were 17 appeals in 2017. There are four appeals already in 2018.”

The ongoing battle highlights tensions between local developers who want to move forward with more than 6,000 planned housing units and a contingent of residents who believe that those projects, as currently conceived, will displace locals, raise land values and make the city less affordable. Both groups want to change language in the comprehensive plan, which will have a profound impact on the city’s growth over the next 20 years.

“If the land values go up when they put in a development, it forces the people who are there to leave,” said Nick DelleDonne, who is on the steering committee for the D.C. Grassroots Planning Coalition and will testify on Tuesday. “They are not going for better opportunities. They can’t afford to stay there any longer.”

DelleDonne’s organization, according to its website, consists of individuals and organizations “committed to furthering racial, economic and environmental justice by challenging rampant development which contributes to gentrification and displacement of existing residents.” Its membership include representatives of Empower DC, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, and the Democratic Socialists of DC.

One of the most controversial proposed comprehensive plan changes would provide the Zoning Commission more flexibility on PUDs, making an appeal more difficult to win if the panel doesn’t follow the zoning map to a T. The language reads: “References to representative and specific zone districts in each land use category are intended to provide broad guidance, and are not intended to be strictly followed with respect to determining consistency of a zoning map amendment and/or Planned Unit Development with the Comprehensive Plan.”

Chris Otten, who leads D.C. for Reasonable Development and is the organizer, or backer, of several appeals (and is also a member of the D.C. Grassroots Planning Coalition), said his group isn’t “against development per se.” But he believes the comp plan should provide specific directives for community benefits and amenity packages, identify potential impacts such as displacement and require developers to provide more affordable units.

“We want to strengthen the plan so developers know at the outset when they talk to the Office of Planning, these are things they can expect to talk about, like contributions to infrastructure, contributions to transportation systems, contributions to a community protection fund that protects the community during construction, and real affordability, not just 10 percent,” he said.

Onerous but predictable process

Developers are especially troubled by the appeals that usually follow a lengthy entitlement process — one that requires them to negotiate with city officials and residents on a community benefits package in exchange for zoning flexibility. It is an onerous but predictable process that developers say they have become accustomed when getting projects approved by the D.C. Zoning Commission.

“You get through this and all of the sudden you have to deal with an appeal and a lawsuit,” Weers said.

Perhaps the prime example of this is the controversial $720 McMillan project, which Weers said went through 22 public hearings and well over 200 community meetings.

“We got our entitlements approved in 2015. It’s 2018, I’m still dealing with an appeal,” Weers said. “We had a process. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Now we are changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

There are now “thousands of units caught up in these lawsuits and every single one of these projects went through the entitlements process,” he added.

Kirby Vining, treasurer of Friends of McMillan Park, an organization that has fought the McMillan project for many years, said he believes the proposed comp plan changes would give the Zoning Commission “carte blanche” to approve projects and eviscerate a community’s ability to appeal. The friends group has long argued that the city-owned McMillan — entitled for 1 million square feet of medical office space, more than 500 apartments, nearly 150 townhomes and a Harris Teeter — should be scaled back or reimagined as public open space.

“It removes all the checks and balances in the due process that the community has in working with developers,” said Vining, who plans to testify on Tuesday.

In addition to McMillan, appealed projects that have delayed or quashed by the courts include The Menkiti Group’s 901 Monroe St. NE in Brookland, Foulger-Pratt’s 370-unit Press House at Union District at 301 N St. NE, Kettler’s Market Terminal near Union Market, and Trammell Crow’s Central Armature Works redo.

‘Functional’ process

David Alpert, founder and president of Greater Greater Washington and an organizer of the D.C. Housing Priorities Coalition, said his group is pushing the city to change language in the comprehensive plan that will allow the “PUD process be able function well.”

Alpert’s coalition includes the support of organizations that, on occasion, do not see eye to eye — multiple developers like Menkiti, MRP Realty and Ditto Residential, numerous advisory neighborhood commissions, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute and SEIU 32BJ.

“We want it to be able to function where the Zoning Commission can hear from the community, they can hear from the neighborhood advisory commission, it can determine what community benefits are possible in a project and then it can make a decision saying that the community benefits are sufficient to approve that project and have every project move forward,” Alpert said.

Alpert said the legal challenges have become so pervasive that many developers are no longer pursuing PUDs.

“They are building smaller projects. There are no community benefits,” he said. “There is less housing being created. There’s less affordable housing being created.”

He also said there needs to be clearer language in the comp plan about preserving and creating affordable housing.

“It’s possible to avoid displacement in a way that is in partnership with the development community,” he said.

Read the full story here.

Making a Difference: Teens at Stony Brook Apartments praised in Smarter Growth presentation

Posted on by Erin Phillips

A group of teens, who received county awards for their regular grounds and stream cleanups around their Stony Brook apartments and Little Hunting Creek, were featured in a “walking tour and forum series” event of the Coalition for Smarter Growth last month. The nonprofit coalition sponsors educational events and works in the metro area to help plan for growth that is green and transit-centered.

In the community room of Stony Brook Apartments at 3600 Buckman Road, Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the coalition, Monica Billinger of the Audubon Naturalist Society, and others gave presentations on how the planned EMBARK development along Route 1 may influence stormwater management in Hybla Valley.

Schwartz saw EMBARK as an exciting chance to right some of the wrongs of development of the 1950s that paved over huge areas for parking lots and channeled streams to carry flood water to the river as fast as possible, gouging themselves out and removing all life forms.

New trends in development allow runoff water to soak back into the ground through green surfaces, holding ponds, and meandering streams before reaching the river. Billinger stressed the importance of neighborhoods’ understanding the water cycle and acting to keep water clean through rain capture, stream clean up, green spaces, and other environmental actions.

Five of the dozen or so teens from the apartments who have participated in about 10 stream clean ups attended the meeting and told the community leaders who attended why they helped out.

The teen group is led by Ryan Barton, manager of community impact strategies for Community Preservation and Development Corporation, which owns the 204 apartments. The apartments sport solar panels on the roofs and rain barrels at the drainpipes. The grounds are litter free, thanks in part to the students suggesting trash cans near the mailboxes.

Little Hunting Creek originates on the east side of Route 1 and runs behind Walmart, Costco and Audubon Mobile Home Park, then turns east runs through large residential developments such as Creekside, Sequoia, and Stoney Creek. It parallels Buckman Road and flows back under Route 1 where it widens and flows through residential areas to enter the Potomac River at Riverside Park. Barton and Billinger stressed the importance of the involvement of communities, especially youth, in protecting streams as they flow through neighborhoods.

Various civic leaders, some from the downstream areas of the creek, attended the briefing. They were joined by Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay on the grounds along the creek, which is fenced off from most apartment property.

Asked why they participated in clean ups, the teens — three girls and two boys — gave the first reason as “he [Barton] gives us food” — pizza to be exact. But Barton noted that the teens kept working many hours after the pizza was finished.

“At first I didn’t want to touch those dirty things,” said Stephanie Agyemang-Manu, “but now I find clean- up relaxing — sort of therapeutic.” Racheal Appiah said she just wanted to help out her community. Carmela Dangale said she was still getting used to it but feels like she is helping out.

The teen group is two-time defender of the Fairfax County Youth Volunteer Group of the Year Award from Volunteer Fairfax, and is nominated again — and Racheal is nominated for Youth Volunteer of the Year.

Barton, who works full-time at Stony Brook, is now also working with CPDCs other properties to expand youth volunteer opportunities in locations such as Southeast, D.C.; Reston, Va.; and Silver Spring, Md.

“People are listening to young people, these days,” McKay said. “When our community was built here there were no environmental standards and most of the problems we see are a result of that. As the area redevelops with EMBARK, this is exactly the right time to be in this part of the county. We are focusing on all positive things.”

Read the full story here.

A letter from DC Council chairman Phil Mendelson and five colleagues could imperil the Metro funding deal

Posted on by Erin Phillips

Last week, the Virginia General Assembly approved dedicated funding for Metro for the first time ever. That funding is conditional on DC and Maryland making “proportional” contributions.

But a letter released yesterday, from DC Council chairman Phil Mendelson and five other councilmembers, argues DC shouldn’t pay what Virginia expects. That could lead Virginia or Maryland to pull back on their own contributions, leaving Metro with not enough money for needed repairs and upgrades.

While the councilmembers have a point that the current funding formula is unfair in some ways, this isn’t the time to press the issue. Metro needs dedicated funding now. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser says she is ready to provide the full funding needed, and the DC Council should step up to do the same.

Who pays what?

Local governments divvy up the share of WMATA operating and capital funding under a complex formula written into the WMATA Compact. Here’s a good explainer from contributor Michael Perkins. For rail, it combines “density-weighted population” (charging more to denser areas than sparser ones), number of stations, and ridership. That currently works out to DC paying 36 percent, Maryland 33 percent, and Virginia a bit under 31 percent.

District leaders first suggested a uniform regional sales tax for Metro dedicated funding, which would have led to Virginia paying more than the other jurisdictions, since Virginia generates more sales tax revenue than Maryland or DC.

Another option would be to split the funding obligation equally, with each jurisdiction paying one-third of the total. That’s how federal PRIIA funds work: the federal government pays $150 million a year to WMATA, but only if DC, Maryland, and Virginia each contribute $50 million themselves, combining to equal the federal amount.

But Virginia legislators insisted the new dedicated funding follow the formula. WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld and advocates have been pushing for a total of $500 million a year in dedicated, bondable funding. That means $153 million a year from Virginia, $167 million from Maryland, and $178 million from the District.

The letter, also signed by councilmembers Kenyan McDuffie (Ward 5), Vincent Gray (Ward 7), Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1), Mary Cheh (Ward 3) and David Grosso (At Large), argues this is unfair. Mendelson wrote, “The District has only 32 percent of Metrorail’s ridership, 32.5 percent of the track miles and 15 percent of the region’s population.” He suggests that instead of $178 million, the District pay $166.6 million, which would be equal shares.

However, this is a difference of about $11 million a year. It’s not worth blowing up the whole deal over, and that’s likely what would happen.

The deal really could fall apart

Last year, dedicated funding for Metro in 2018 seemed like a pipe dream. A MWCOG panel (which recommended equal shares, Mendelson notes) predicted that dedicated funding wouldn’t come together this year and that 2019 was the best case. Thanks to strong pushes from advocates like the Coalition for Smarter Growth, League of Women Voters, Sierra Club, and Washington Interfaith Network, and business groups like the Federal City Council, Board of Trade, Greater Washington Partnership, and Chambers of Commerce, it’s really looking likely now.

The legislature in Richmond, still controlled by Republicans most of whom have pledged not to raise taxes, was able to agree on a funding package. One bill going into conference provided $125 million instead of the needed $153, but the higher number won out in conference. The deal takes a lot of money from other Northern Virginia transportation, which Governor Ralph Northam is hoping to amend in special session. Nonetheless, it happened.

That’s historic.

A few months ago, many legislators in Richmond were insisting on anti-union measures or major governance overhauls that Maryland and DC never would have agreed to, before they’d consider funding. It helps that some of those folks lost their seats in November, but others remained. Yet the deal has only moderate governance changes, like caps on how much WMATA can expect its budget to grow every year and a sensible move to make the WMATA board smaller and less unwieldy by limiting participation by alternates.

The action now moves to Maryland, which has approved funding of $150 million but has to bump its number up to $167 million. Governor Larry Hogan had initially demanded that any Metro funding involve a federal government share, something which wasn’t going to happen; he’s dropped that. Observers expect the Maryland legislature to get to $167 million this week; they were partly waiting to see if Virginia would get it together, since the Old Dominion was always seen as the toughest of the three.

If the DC Council doesn’t commit $178 million, then Virginia won’t be giving its full share. Jack Evans, Ward 2 DC councilmember and chair of the WMATA board, told the Washington Post, “If the District stays at $167 [million], Virginia has a provision in its law that negates its contributions. As such, the dedicated funding proposal would fall apart, and Metro would be left with nothing.”

Virginia’s legislation lowers its payment proportionally, so for every dollar DC comes up short, WMATA loses about three.

$11 million isn’t chump change, but the District can afford it (it’s one of the few jurisdictions with a surplus this year, in fact). While there are certainly plenty of things to spend $11 million on, having Metro funding fall apart would be disastrous, especially for DC which is more reliant on Metro.

John Falcicchio, chief of staff to Mayor Bowser, sent a statement saying, “The Mayor’s budget will fully fund Metro with $178 million of dedicated revenue. We will need everyone to be open to how we get there in order to fund the Metro system our residents deserve.”

Councilmembers say they didn’t mean to imperil the deal

From talking to councilmembers and their staffers, it appears at least some of them weren’t fully aware how the letter would be received. Staff for some councilmembers told me that the letter moved very fast, and that it was initially characterized as just asking the mayor to seek a fairer allocation. One could certainly read the letter that way, but that is not how it sounded to the press, advocates, the public, or most importantly, legislators in the other states.

Following the public reaction, Mendelson’s office clarified that they aren’t threatening to hold up the funding:

https://twitter.com/ChmnMendelson/status/974292440357142528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fggwash.org%2Fview%2F66903%2Fletter-dc-council-chairman-phil-mendelson-imperil-metro-wmata-funding-deal&tfw_creator=ggwash&tfw_site=ggwash 

Brianne Nadeau (ward 1), one of the letter’s signers, sent a statement: “I support the deal made between the three jurisdictions and believe the District should pay its share. It seemed there was an opportunity to get a better deal for District taxpayers, but that window has closed.”

Is this actually unfair?

It depends how you look at it, but maybe so.

It is true that the density-weighted formula is somewhat unfair; it actually rewards Virginia for placing stations in the medians of highways surrounded by parking lots. The very lengthy Silver Line costs a lot to maintain all those tracks, but the formula doesn’t really account for that.

While DC only has 32 percent of ridership, many Maryland and Virginia riders take Metro to DC. However, those riders don’t pay any income tax to DC, which is unfair, but that’s a bigger issue and a bigger unfairness.

The 15 percent of population statistic is not really relevant; the region has large areas in Maryland and Virginia that are nowhere near Metro.

The District is also just more reliant on transit than Maryland and Virginia, meaning the consequence of no deal is more severe; that might simply mean DC needs to take a deal that might be a bit unfair.

There have been proposals from WMATA staff in the past to set up a mechanism to reward jurisdictions for putting density near their Metro stations, or building bus lanes which save money (and help riders!) by reducing bus delay. Right now, if Virginia builds a bus lane, it saves some money, but so do the jurisdictions which didn’t build the lane. It would be fair to study prospective tweaks like that.

The Virginia and Maryland bills require some follow-up studies, like ones into making the Inspector General more independent. DC could require in its bill that WMATA study how and whether the formula is fair, and suggest ways to make it more fair in the future. That would be a good way to address this issue now. Blowing up the deal is not.

Ask the council to step up

If you live in DC, please use the form below to ask Mendelson and your councilmembers to commit the full $178 million. The consequence, to DC and the whole region, of any other course of action is too severe.

https://ggwash.salsalabs.org/dontmessarounddcfundmetro03152018/index.html 

Read the full story here.

D.C. mayor seeks to stop costly legal delays to development projects

Posted on by Claire Jaffe

Activists seeking to thwart the breakneck speed of development across the District have turned with greater frequency to the city’s highest court, filing legal challenges that have delayed more than two dozen projects in the past two years and driven up their costs.

Now the Bowser administration wants to curtail those challenges, proposing to amend District policies in ways to reduce those avenues for protest.

District officials say that the changes would end nuisance legal challenges, reduce the cost of doing business in Washington, and expedite the construction of housing units that the city needs.

“We have thousands of new homes that are hung up in court, including hundreds of affordable homes,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition For Smarter Growth. “The courts seem much more willing to ­second-guess the process, and it has thrown everything into uncertainty.”

But activists counter that the city is making it more difficult to stave off gentrification. They say their ability to turn to the D.C. Court of Appeals is necessary to prevent District officials from violating their own policies to accommodate luxury projects that drive up housing prices in exchange for minimal benefits for neighborhoods.

“It’s the most basic part of our checks and review,” said Kirby Vining, an activist who successfully appealed the city’s approval of a project in his neighborhood. “Without it, we would have been stuck.” He called the administration’s proposals a “Christmas present for developers.”

The proposed changes are part of a periodic review of the District’s policies that guide future growth, a process that has generated unusual public interest as residents, community groups and city agencies have suggested an estimated 3,000 amendments.

The D.C. Council, which must approve any changes, is slated to hold a hearing on the proposed new language later this month.

Since 2016, 25 appeals have been filed against projects approved by the District, three times the number lodged between 2013 and 2015, according to the District’s Zoning Commission. Members of one community group, Union Market Neighbors, have filed appeals against eight projects in the blocks adjoining Gallaudet University in Northeast, including one that was recently dismissed after the group reached a settlement with a developer.

The number of legal challenges in the District surged after the appeals court in 2016 overturned the Zoning Commission’s approval of a project to redevelop McMillan Park in Northwest into a complex of residential units, offices, a new park and a supermarket.

The development’s opponents successfully argued that zoning officials failed to consider the project’s potential to intensify gentrification. The opponents also contended that the officials had violated the city’s own regulations by permitting buildings denser than allowed under the D.C. Comprehensive Plan. The plan is the District’s compendium of policies that guide its evolution in housing, transportation, economic development and the environment.

The McMillan project’s opponents say that kind of contradiction would be less clear under new language the Bowser administration wants to insert in the Comprehensive Plan that asserts that references to such categories are “intended to give broad guidance and are not intended to be strictly followed.”

The D.C. Council’s first hearing on the proposed changes to the comprehensive plan is scheduled for March 20.

Other proposed changes include deleting specific measurements — “8 or more floors,” for example — that define terms such as “high density residential.”

“They are removing specificity and making the rules fuzzy,” said Aristotle Theresa, a lawyer who has appealed Zoning Commission approvals 14 times and represented the opponents to the McMillan project. “This is all to make it harder to file appeals.”

The proposed changes would make it more difficult for his largely poor clients to negotiate with developers, he said. They would be unable to “extract some equity out of the cycles of disinvestment and gentrification. It also takes away the say in how our neighborhoods develop.”

But District officials and advocates contend that it is the current language in the plan that’s ambiguous.

“To say we’re trying to wipe out any appeals or the ability to have due process is false,” said Andrew Trueblood, an economic adviser to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). “The problem is we’re litigated to the letter of the words in the Comprehensive Plan rather than the policy’s intent. This is meant to clarify what we’re trying to do. The more we can clarify the policies and remove ambiguity, then everyone will know the rules of the road from the beginning.”

The mayor’s proposals have generated widespread and sometimes heated discussion, with a coalition of advocates, community organizations and developers teaming up to press for changes.

At the same time, council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) warned his 15,000 Facebook followers recently that the mayor is seeking to remove “language that helps folks have leverage in court against major development that does not protect poor communities #STAYWOKE.”

Developers have said that costs incurred by the appeals discourage them from seeking zoning changes for their projects, instead of building only what they are allowed under existing regulations.

As a result, they say they are more likely to propose smaller projects that create less housing, both market-rate and affordable.

“There’s a chilling effect on development,” developer Martin Ditto said about the appeals, one of which was filed — and eventually dismissed — against his project near Union Market in Northeast. “People aren’t likely to go after deals that are uncertain.”

Ditto is part of a coalition advocating changes to the Comprehensive Plan, a group that includes the Coalition For Smarter Growth and Greater Greater Washington, as well as developers such as JBG Smith and Trammell Crow, which have been the target of appeals.

Activists who have filed the appeals argue that the subsidized housing included in the projects is aimed at people making more than $50,000 and not the District’s poorest residents.

“It’s affordable only for single, wealthy professionals,” said Chris Otten, a community organizer who has helped file a flurry of appeals in recent years. “It’s not affordable to working-class families and longtime District residents. They use the term ‘affordable’ to cover up the harm that’s created when you build big boxes for professionals.”

Bowser did not invoke Otten’s name, but she seemed to have him in mind when answering council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) at a recent meeting. McDuffie asked if “there’s anything else we need to do” to curtail appeals that “slow down the production of thousands of units of housing — both market-rate and affordable.”

The mayor replied that she hoped to reduce the influence of “outside parties” driving opposition to projects in places where residents are largely supportive. Her priorities, Bowser said, include “ensuring that the citizens’ voice is not diluted by someone who has a totally outside agenda that isn’t impacted directly.”

Otten helped organize the appeal in the McMillan case, as well as at Barry Farm, the public-housing complex in Southeast that the city is seeking to redevelop. He also led an Adams Morgan community group that received $2 million from a developer to drop its opposition to a new hotel in the neighborhood.

More recently, he helped organize Union Market Neighbors, which has appealed eight projects surrounding the market, a 40-acre swath of wholesale warehouses that District officials have rezoned to accommodate apartments, hotels and ret ail.

The appeals court has dismissed several of the cases, one of them Feb. 7 after the developer agreed to pay Union Market Neighbors $150,000. Otten said the group has discussed using the funds to hire a liaison to talk with “the developers about how are we going to get local people jobs and who is going to tell the community that a giant crane is rolling through their neighborhood?”

“This money is going to a community that’s about to see a dramatic adverse change to their future,” Otten said. “At one point, it was a low-rise market. Now it’s going to be replaced by glass-and-steel behemoths.”

Not everyone in the neighborhood opposed the project, a total of 1,100 apartments spread across five buildings. The local Advisory Neighborhood Commission twice voted to support the development.

Philip Evans, a lawyer for the developer, Kettler, declined to comment on the settlement.

Read the full story here.

County Council Considering Diverting Funds From Montrose Parkway East Project

Posted on by Claire Jaffe
More than $ 120 million in funds could be redirected to other transportation projects or for school construction

Several County Council members are considering diverting about $120 million in funds from the Montrose Parkway East road project to other transportation or schools projects after smart growth advocates and Forest Glen residents came out in force against the spending during a capital budget hearing earlier this month.

County Executive Ike Leggett in his fiscal 2019 capital budget proposal recommended the county fund about $124 million over the next six years to build the proposed four-lane parkway between Veirs Mill Road and Parklawn Road in the North Bethesda area.

The road project is expected to reduce traffic congestion in the area, according to the county. The project would require cutting through a section of Rock Creek Stream Valley Park. County officials first proposed the roadway in the 1992 master plan for the area, but the funding to build it has been delayed.

An outline and map showing the proposed route of the Montrose Parkway East project via Montgomery County’s Department of Transportation website

During the hearing earlier this month, several residents and transit advocates urged the council not to provide the funding.

“We ask the council to delay expensive or outdated projects like the Montrose Parkway East and invest in projects like a second entrance at the Forest Glen Metro station or the White Flint Metro station,” Peter Tomao, the Montgomery County advocacy manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, told the council.

Dan Reed, who was representing the Action Committee for Transit, said he was concerned road projects such as Montrose Parkway East take away funds from efforts to make neighborhoods more walkable.

“We could do so many better things with that money,” Reed said.

The Forest Glen residents, many who live on the east side of Georgia Avenue, testified that crossing the roadway to get to the Metro station is dangerous and they avoid doing it, even though they live close to the station.

“I was especially appalled by the proposal to build Montrose Parkway East,” Forest Glen resident Alison Gillespie said. “That parkway would cut through parkland next to Rock Creek and seems to go against every stated smart growth goal the county has set for the last 20 years.”

Many Forest Glen residents said crossing Georgia Avenue at Forest Glen Road (pictured) is dangerous and requested a second entrance built on the east side of Georgia Avenue to avoid having to make the crossing. Via Google Maps

Now council members Marc Elrich, George Leventhal, Hans Riemer and Roger Berliner said Wednesday they’re looking to use those funds for other projects.

Elrich sent an email to his colleagues after the public hearing suggesting that the council use the money to increase funding for school construction and to build a new Forest Glen Metro entrance, and for other transportation projects in the county.

On Wednesday, Elrich said the school system’s construction plan covers expected increases in enrollment, but doesn’t address school overcrowding or the backlog of proposed projects.

“We really need to deal with class-size growth,” Elrich said.

Roger Berliner, the chair of the council’s transportation committee, said Montrose Parkway East could be needed in the future to handle traffic as the White Flint area develops, but he doesn’t believe it’s needed now.

The transportation committee is scheduled to examine the funding for the parkway at its March 8 meeting. Council members Tom Hucker and Nancy Floreen are also on the committee.

“I believe it is likely the committee will be recommending deferring moving forward on Montrose Parkway East at this moment in time,” Berliner said.  “If Amazon were to come to the areas where we put forward, that would definitely have an impact—it would become a much higher priority at that juncture.”

Officials have told Bethesda Beat the county pitched the White Flint area to Amazon for the company’s second headquarters, although the county has not formally confirmed that’s the case. Berliner said if Amazon were to choose the county, then perhaps the council would consider funding the parkway sooner. He also noted the state has proposed $2 billion in transportation improvements if the company picks Montgomery.

County Council President Hans Riemer said he supports redirecting the funds for the parkway to projects such as a second entrance at the White Flint Metro station and building bike lanes in White Flint.

“I think that Montrose Parkway East is premature,” Riemer said. “I think it is designed to serve development that doesn’t yet exist.”

Council member George Leventhal also said he was receptive to the concerns expressed by residents at the hearing.

“At our public hearing we heard from a lot of folks who want to divert that money for other worthy purposes,” Leventhal said. “We did not hear from people expressing support for Montrose Parkway East.”

He added that he supports moving forward with building a second entrance to the Forest Glen Metro station on the east side of Georgia Avenue.

Floreen said Wednesday she is opposed to diverting the funds for the parkway.

“I think it’s outrageous frankly,” Floreen said. “Road money is an easy target for people. Of course, we’d rather fund schools. If we didn’t have to fund anything else, all we’d do is fund schools. But road construction gets the short shrift. When people complain about congestion in the Rockville and North Bethesda area—blame the County Council.”

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Hopes run high for historic Metro deals in Maryland and Virginia, but crucial details remain unresolved

Posted on by Erin Phillips

Maryland Del. Maggie L. McIntosh was stunned. The veteran lawmaker, who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, had just heard nearly 90 minutes of testimony in which people who typically disagree were all on the same side.

Corporate executives and union leaders. Chamber of commerce presidents and environmentalists. Civic leaders from both the Washington suburbs and Baltimore. All favored giving Metro more state money.

“I can’t believe there’s nobody opposing this bill,” McIntosh (D-Baltimore City) said at the end of a hearing in Annapolis last week.

The unanimity was a sign of the political momentum in Maryland, Virginia and the District propelling what would be a landmark deal to provide permanent, dedicated funding for the regional transit system.

Metro revenue and governance bills enjoyed favorable receptions in three key committee hearings in Annapolis. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is resisting some key provisions, but his team is in active negotiations with Democratic lawmakers in hope of achieving progress.

In Richmond, both the full House and Senate passed separate bills that would give Metro earmarked funding. The District, which is strongly supportive of Metro, is expected to go along with whatever the states decide.

Crucial details remain to be decided. There is no consensus on how much money Metro would get, what management and labor reforms would be required, whether Northern Virginians’ taxes would increase, and whether an increased federal contribution must be part of the package.

And the Trump administration cast a shadow over the otherwise sunny outlook by saying it wants to reduce federal funding for Metro.

Still, the events in Maryland and Virginia made clear that Metro is closer than ever to gaining a significant, guaranteed stream of revenue. Since its founding in 1967, the agency has been the only major transit system in the nation to lack such financial support.

“The jurisdictions are aligning for the first time in 50 years,” said Maryland state Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), chief sponsor of one of the funding bills.

Several factors account for the encouraging prospects. One is the nearly universal respect accorded Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld for the changes he has instituted regarding management, safety and reliability since taking over the system in late 2015.

Another element is the growing acceptance among politicians outside the Washington region that Metro is vital to the area’s economy and thus to the prosperity of Virginia and Maryland as a whole.

“Metro is extremely important to the vibrancy of our commonwealth, just like the port is,” said Virginia Del. S. Chris Jones (R-Suffolk), referring to the harbors at Hampton Roads, which have received substantial state support.

That point has been driven home by Amazon.com’s desire to build its second North American headquarters on a site with good public transit. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Northern Virginia, Montgomery County and the District are on the Seattle-based retail company’s shortlist of 20 locations for HQ2 and its 50,000 jobs.

Finally, the region’s business leaders have forged an unusually large and strong alliance to lobby for increased Metro funding. In the latest sign of business support, six major companies joined the MetroNow coalition backing the campaign: Capital One, Marriott, Hilton, MedStar Health, Exelon and Washington Gas.

The companies and business groups also have joined with other civic organizations, including environmental groups such as the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“Our growing membership is showing its strength at the right time,” said MetroNow campaign manager Clare Flannery.

Despite the optimism, significant hurdles remain. Perhaps the biggest is Hogan’s insistence on limiting the increased funding to four years. Both bills in Virginia, as well as the Democratic-backed ones in Maryland, call for permanent dedicated funding.

Hogan, however, opposes an open-ended pledge of funds.

“The governor’s plan is not a blank check,” spokesman Doug Mayer said. “He is not going to turn over unlimited funds to an agency that has been known more for its failures than its successes.”

In another potential obstacle, the total contributions agreed upon by the three jurisdictions may fall short of the additional $500 million a year in dedicated funding that Wiedefeld says is necessary to ensure reliability and safety.

Metro and its backers want each jurisdiction to contribute its share based on an existing Metro funding formula, which is based on population, number of stations and similar factors. Under it, Maryland would contribute $167 million, Virginia $154 million and the District $179 million.

However, the bills being considered in Maryland would provide $125 million. Business groups and others are pushing hard to raise that to $167 million, but it’s not clear whether they will be successful.

In Virginia, a key issue is tax increases. The House approved a bill offering $105 million a year — with no tax increases. The Senate’s version provides the full Virginia share of $154 million, but includes new taxes on hotel stays and real estate transactions in Northern Virginia.

Virginia House leadership has ruled out any tax increases, although there may be support for setting a floor for regional wholesale gasoline taxes. That could yield $17 million or more for Metro, on top of the $105 million, for a total of $122 million.

The District is considering dedicating three-quarters of a penny per dollar of its sales tax to help meet its obligation to Metro. It has given up seeking a regionwide sales tax to support the transit agency because of opposition from Virginia and Maryland. But D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has objected that the proposed regional funding formula is unfair to the city.

Wiedefeld said it is crucial to get the full $500 million from the three jurisdictions, because the White House has signaled it wants to reduce the federal government’s contributions.

“The key message is we’ve got to stick to the $500 million across the board,” Wiedefeld said. “We may need to backfill” to make up for a lower federal subsidy, he said.

The Trump administration last week proposed to reduce the federal subsidy to Metro from $150 million to $120 million in the next fiscal year. The White House budget office also said federal support to the transit agency needs to be “lessened” over the “long term”; the federal subsidy program for Metro is set to expire after 2019.

Given the federal government’s position, another possible stumbling block is Hogan’s insistence that Maryland would contribute more money for Metro only if the federal government increases its contribution. Democrats, business groups and other Metro supporters see that as unrealistic.

Hogan’s spokesman defended the governor’s position while noting that negotiations are continuing.

“It is bare bones common-sense that we put pressure on the federal government to pay their fair share,” Mayer said. “What’s really important is the governor has been leading on the issue . . . and he’s going to continue to do that.”

A key player in procuring federal funding is Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.), the only Republican to represent a congressional jurisdiction that includes a Metro station. She said Friday she is “confident” that Congress will restore the full $150 million for Metro for the next fiscal year.

Asked about extending and increasing the federal subsidy in later years, as she has proposed in her own Metro bill, Comstock said only that changes would be necessary to have a chance of succeeding.

“I think if we have the reforms, it’s going to be a lot easier for me to make that case,” Comstock said.

Such changes should include restructuring the board to make it more “businesslike,” and saving money on pension and overtime costs, she said.

A requirement for governance and labor reforms as a condition for getting extra money is also an issue in the state legislatures, especially Virginia.

The House bill in Richmond would shrink the 16-member Metro board to a “reform board” of four or five members at first, and later create an eight-member board. It also calls for limiting the agency’s annual growth in operating costs to 2 percent and adopting a “right-to-work” provision for any Metro projects solely within Virginia.

The less-restrictive Senate bill calls for effectively shrinking the Metro board to eight by restricting the participation of the eight alternate members. It backs Wiedefeld’s commitment to 3 percent annual growth in the operating budget and does not include the labor provision.

In Maryland, proposed governance changes include requiring the secretary of transportation or their representative to serve as a Metro board member, and to strengthen the role of the Metro inspector general.

It will be a daunting task to work out all these differences in Annapolis and Richmond in the relatively short time allotted. Virginia lawmakers must resolve the differences between their two competing bills by the scheduled close of the General Assembly session March 10.

Maryland has more time — its session lasts until April 9 — but its legislation should not contradict what Virginia approves. The D.C. Council meets year round, so its calendar is not an issue.

Nonetheless, the progress has lifted the hopes of Metro and its backers that dedicated funding is on the way.

“Clearly there’s a sense that something has got to happen,” Wiedefeld said.

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Bi-County Parkway off the table, but policymakers still seek north-south fix

Posted on by Tyler Sanders

The Bi-County Parkway is effectively off the table thanks to relentless community opposition to plans to build a connector road between Prince William and Loudoun — but transportation planners across Northern Virginia are still brainstorming how exactly they might link the two rapidly growing counties.
The issue has mostly faded from the public eye, particularly after the Prince William Board of County Supervisors removed the project, which would extend Va. 234 to connect to U.S. 50, from its comprehensive plan two years ago. Yet, at a panel of transportation-focused policymakers and advocates convened by Prince William’s “Committee of 100” in Manassas on Thursday, there was broad agreement that officials need to do something to ease north-south travel between Loudoun and Prince William, even if it doesn’t take the form of the infamous Bi-County Parkway.

“We need the connectivity, so if the answer is no Bi-County Parkway, we need some other way to make that connection,” said county Supervisor Marty Nohe, R-Coles, and the chairman of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. “It’s a political hurdle, though.”

Nohe expects that the widening of Interstate 66 outside the Beltway to Gainesville will help some in that regard, as will the bypass for Va. 28 that his NVTA is studying right now. He hopes that improvements to Va. 28 will help ease access to Dulles International Airport, a key factor for Bi-County Parkway boosters. But he still believes transportation planners need to consider “another option” for people looking to get to Loudoun.

“We’ve decided the Bi-County Parkway is not going to be that option, so now there’s an effort to identify a new alternative,” Nohe said. “Later this year, we’ll have an update to the transportation section of our comprehensive plan, and I expect then we’ll have some type of new northsouth connectivity to supplant the Bi-County Parkway on the table.”

Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and a longtime Bi-County Parkway critic, praised that approach, noting that he sees a variety of potential options on the table. In particular, he thinks Prince William could mirror Loudoun’s decision to use roundabouts to link U.S. 15 and U.S. 50 by constructing roundabouts where Pageland Lane intersects with U.S. 29 and Va. 234 in Gainesville.

“That way, you have the ability to rotate around if you’re an existing resident, and not have anyone else join you on the roads,” Schwartz said. “The bottom line is, the Bi-County Parkway is not the silver bullet it’s advertised to be. There are other options.”

Not everyone around Northern Virginia is so sure. Not only has Supervisors’ Chairman Corey Stewart, a Republican, repeatedly insisted that the project could be revived, but the project’s original proponents in the region remain adamant that it’s best solution for the two counties.

“It’s an absolutely essential and obvious need,” said David Birtwistle, chief executive officer of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance. “Route 28 obviously needs to be widened, but it’s never going to be enough to meet demand…It makes no sense to move all north-south traffic through Manassas, and it makes all the sense in the world to move it around the city to the west.”

Birtwistle is still convinced that the absence of the road is constricting the county’s access to Dulles, making Prince William less attractive to businesses and even hampering the growth of George Mason University’s Science and Technology campus outside Manassas. He expects that the county may well be able to make road improvements in the area, but he believes they are no replacement for a major new highway.

“It puts the county at a disadvantage when it comes to moving away from being a 21 century bedroom community,” Birtwistle said.

Schwartz, however, maintains that the Bi-County Parkway would become an “access point for new development” in western Prince William and Loudoun, forever marking the end to rural areas like the “Rural Crescent.”

“It’s just going to mean that tens of thousands of drivers join you on the roads,” Schwartz said. “You can’t build your way out of this.”

Schwartz’s group has long advocated for more public transit options in the region, and the development of walkable communities split between residential and commercial spaces known as “mixed-use developments” as a surer solution for the region’s transportation woes.

He believes the city of Manassas is already doing a “great job” of creating that sort of community, and he feels officials have “waited far too long” to embrace the same sort of ethos in Woodbridge. Supervisor Frank Principi, D-Woodbridge, has championed the idea some in the past, but Schwartz is eager to see Prince William leaders embrace the area as “the gateway to the rest of the county.”

“If we’re already doing all our shopping on Amazon, why not re-develop these parking lots in shopping centers you’ve built to make more walkable communities?” Schwartz said. “You’ve already paved over all the land and cut down the trees. Why not use them?”

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