[RP TownTalk] MUTC Position Letter regarding proposed 7-eleven

[Vernon Archer]

Friends and neighbors,

I am cutting a pasting the text of the MUTC Committee's position letter
that was sent to the council and myself on June 16.  This issue will be
addressed by the Council at tonights meeting and I encourage all interested
to join us.

_________________________________

Dear Mayor Archer and Council Members,

At the meeting on Wednesday, June 10, 2014, the Riverdale Park M-U-TC Local
Design Review Committee (hereafter “the Committee”) reviewed Special Permit
Application SP- 150003, a project seeking to convert 6315 Baltimore Avenue
into a 7-Eleven store. The Committee directed me to write this letter to
you (with copies distributed as I saw fit), and to explicitly address the
following points (all standard/page number references refer to the adopted
2004 Riverdale Park M-U-TC Development Plan, hereafter “the Development
Plan”):
• ...the need to verify, after completion of the project, compliance with
the less than 15 % increase in gross floor area (GFA) threshold.
 • ...the need to verify the definition of “adjacent” as it applies to
Standard 5 on page 36
• ...the need to verify compliance with the window requirements of standard
1 on page 54 (regarding the frontage on Baltimore Avenue)
• ...the need to verify compliance with window requirements of standard 10
on page 55 (regarding the wall facing Sheridan Street)

The motion also stated that I must pass on the Committee’s “encouragement
to support the enforcement of [Development Plan] standards.”
(In discussions leading up to the motion, the Committee decided to follow
the precedent established during a previous Special Permit application to
issue technical comments on the Special Permit application and not to make
an explicit recommendation for approval, approval with conditions, or
denial of the application).

I will discuss the issues identified by the Committee in the order they
appear above.

The 15 % “increase in gross floor area threshold” (first bullet, above) is
a test, part of the Development Plan, that excludes some projects from
complete review by the Committee; this exclusion was intended to streamline
small projects and small enhancements of existing structures. The exclusion
is not complete – it still requires review for the portion of the project
that changes.

Even though this application extensively restructures the building (for
instance, changing the appearance of the front of the building from being a
multi-depth structure to being flat, and changing the roofline from a
peaked structure to being a taller flat roof), the exclusion does appear to
apply so long as the GFA does not increase by more than 15 %. If the
increase is in excess of that level, there are many standards that could
not be applied by the Committee that would need to be re-examined,
including the placement of the building relative to the streets. Because
the increase in GFA on the plans is more than 14 % (which the difference
between the plans and exceeding the 15 % threshold is less than 20 square
feet), the Committee thought that a good way to verify compliance would be
to require the plans to be stamped so that County inspectors would have to
verify, by measurement of the completed building, that the final GFA is
1996.4 square feet or less.

The reason to verify the definition of “adjacent” in Standard 5 on page 36
(second bullet, above) is to clarify whether there is a need for the
applicant to screen the parking lot from residences across Sheridan Street
and Baltimore Avenue. If the definition of “adjacent” identifies those
buildings as being adjacent to 6315 Baltimore Avenue, the lack of screening
in the application would be out of compliance with the referenced Standard.

The final two issues identified by the Committee (third and fourth bullets,
above) are closely related, and are central to the purpose of M-U-TC
zoning. A major goal of M-U-TC zoning is to enhance the experience of
pedestrians, including when they walk past buildings. One of the techniques
to achieve this goal is to have transparent commercial fa¸cades, so that
the pedestrians can see what is going on inside the building. This
engagement between the street and the activities inside the building helps
activate the area outside, and can lead to unexpected conversion of
pedestrians to customers as well. A member of the public present at the
meeting told me afterwards that the generous expanses of windows in Town
Center Market were the reason she was a regular customer there, but had
almost never visited the almost windowless Dumm’s Corner Market (though she
had not realized this before hearing the Committee’s discussion of the
application).

The Development Plan standards require a certain fraction of various walls
of a building to be transparent – for the front fa¸cade, this is 60 %, and
for side walls facing a street, 40 %. The application does not meet these
standards: the front wall is much less than 50 % windows, and the the side
wall (along Sheridan) has no windows at all. An additional benefit 2 of
meeting the requiriements of these two standards is creating “light on two
sides” of the commercial space within - this design pattern is well known
to architects, and is known to provide psychological benefits to those who
work and shop inside.

In closing, I would like to mention that the Committee, during discussion,
expressed disappointment with the overall design quality of the proposed
building – they thought this was a generic and utilitarian building, not
the high-quality pedestrian-oriented development envisioned by the
Development Plan guidelines and shift to M-U-TC zoning.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the decision.

Sincerely,

Alan Thompson

__________________________________________

-- 
Vernon Archer, Mayor
Town of Riverdale Park, Maryland
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://riverdale-park.org/pipermail/towntalk/attachments/20150706/03864623/attachment.html>