ZOC parks some cars

By Charles Houston

I’m on the Zoning Ordinance Committee, which is helping craft a new zoning ordinance for the county. The old ordinance is 23 years old and 1,004 pages.

Frankly, I think it’s fine, but that’s my retrograde opinion, and now I’m fully immersed in the rewrite process for the new ordinance. At our last meeting the committee chairman said I talked a lot; I told him that was because I think a lot.

 Perspectives   

There are two distinct perspectives on ZOC. First, there is an outside consulting firm and county staff.

James David, deputy director of that department, is the lead County manager on the project. Zoning Administrator Mark Stultz is another key person from the County. A bevy of planners work generally behind the scenes, some occasionally attend ZOC’s twice-monthly meetings.

Every County person has been pleasant and I like them. I don’t always agree with them, though. Perhaps it’s the nature of planners: They seem to be idealists, and value public controls. That does not mean they are always right.

The second perspective comes from the ZOC members, 19 of them. While I wish they were all fellow conservationists, the membership includes developers, engineers, development consultants, data center owners and so on.

We often have different opinions on details and there are some thorny issues ahead, but the committee is now operating collegially and most importantly, the membership has extensive hands-on experience with almost everything a zoning ordinance could touch.

I built thousands of parking spaces to support office buildings I developed, for example, and my comments on parking were based on real-world experience. ZOC members seem to be pragmatists and value free-market solutions.

 Idealism vs. experience

Here’s an instance of clashing perspectives.

Traditionally, zoning calls for a minimum number of parking spaces for each use, for example most of the spaces I developed were required on the basis of five spaces per 1,000 square feet of office space in the suburbs, and in urban areas generally “2/1,000 sf” (when expressed as a ratio).

These days planning idealism is in full bloom and Staff likes the idea of having maximum parking limits in some areas, hoping that will relieve congestion, help the environment, encourage alternate means of transportation – bicycles, car-share, etc.  

Many ZOC members, including myself, think actual experience counts more than theory and dreams. Commercial developers remain as owners of their buildings, and must get parking ratios exactly right – provide too few spaces, and projects will not lease up; provide too few and money’s been wasted.

On the other hand, homebuilders quit a subdivision once it’s sold out, so they have the incentive to scrimp on parking to put more money in their pockets. There, minimum parking ratios are absolutely necessary.

Staff has included contemporary feel-good ideas and wants to mandate things like special parking for electric vehicles, car-shares, bicycles and motorcycles. ZOC members think we need more time before we know which of these things are truly required.

A plenitude of parking prescriptions

There are five planning areas for zoning purposes – an Urban area near Metro; a Suburban area in the east and a Rural area in the west; a Transition area between them; and a Joint Land Management Area around the larger towns.

There are also up to 150 land uses that can be permitted in each of these areas, from single-family detached houses to data centers to art studios to … tons of uses.

The new ordinance envisions the minimum amount of parking any use must provide, and in some cases a maximum amount it can build. These standards can vary from planning area to planning area.

All told, there are around 650 different parking standards that must be spelled out in the new ordinance. Staff has done a tremendous amount of work to prepare drafts of all these standards.

ZOC members then reviewed each standard. I’ll quote from the minutes of the ZOC meeting: “ZOC comments generally included concern over the level of detail, lack of definitions, effects of by-right development and change of use, market-driven parking limits, questioning the need for special parking spaces, parking ratios, the parking modifications process, the lack of looking at what is unique to Loudoun, data center parking, zoning enforcement areas of concern, proffers, electric vehicle chargers and their location, bike requirements, recreational vehicles, affordable housing, urban areas and viable means of transportation.” We know our stuff, and were not bashful in making comments.

Staff then went back to work, considered our comments and made some revisions to its draft and says it is still pondering others.

ZOC must act

Staff is therefore in control. It will eventually produce the full zoning document and send it to the Planning Commission. After approval there, the new zoning ordinance would go to the Board of Supervisors.

I hope that at any step a ZOC member may issue a minority opinion, if he or she disagrees with Staff language, and send that opinion to Planning Commissioners or Supervisors. That’s not a formal policy, though.  

Ultimately ZOC is charged with acting in a different way. The Board of Supervisors directed that “the Zoning Ordinance Committee shall review and provide comments …” Thus, ZOC is supposed opine as a single entity, not as a collective of 19 individual opinions.

I believe that we will end up acting as one body, but the mechanics of doing so will be complicated. We will get there the sooner the better, and when we do, our comments to Staff may carry more weight.