Posts about Zoning

Code organization

What's happening: The zoning update will restructure the zoning code (while keeping almost all provisions the same). Instead of having to look in up to 3 places for conflicting rules that all apply to your property, the key information will be in one place.

Main positive point: The zoning code is too hard to understand right now. It needs reorganizing into a form that better helps property owners understand what is and isn't legal on their property.

Parking minimums

What's happening: The zoning update removes minimum parking rules for buildings downtown, residential buildings under 10 units, and buildings in mixed-use and higher-density residential areas near Metro and frequent bus lines.

Main positive point: Current rules force many buildings to include more parking than their residents or workers need. It's really important to remove many of the parking minimums, especially downtown and near transit.

Ways OP could go further:

• Fill in the "holes" in places like Logan Circle and Columbia Heights by making transit zones apply to non-residential uses in R-4 row house zones near transit.
  
• Go even farther and have no minimum parking requirements at all, citywide.
  
• Add parking maximums as well, in addition to one on 100,000-square foot parking lots. These would not have been absolute caps, but would just make developers do a Transportation Demand Management plan if they want to put in more parking than a set threshold.

Accessory dwellings

What's happening: In low- and moderate-density residential areas, people can't rent out a basement or existing garage without going through complex approvals. The proposal would allow this in most lower-density areas for interior units or existing external buildings, but still require a hearing for new or expanded external buildings.

Main positive point: Accessory dwellings help young people afford places to live and seniors age in place. They make housing more affordable and accommodate more residents without fundamentally changing the character of buildings in a neighborhood. They just let neighborhoods house the numbers of people they did 50 years ago.

Ways OP could go further:

• Allow ADUs by right in new external structures as well (as long as the new external structure conforms to the other zoning rules).
  
• Impose fewer restrictions such as on size, balconies, whether an artist can live above a studio, and more.
  
• Include ADUs by right in Georgetown as well—the current proposal requires a special exception for them (more on that later).

Corner stores

What's happening: Retail can locate in moderate density residential row house areas (not low-density or the higher density areas), as long as it's pretty far from other retail, in a corner building or historically commercial building, and satisfies many more restrictions.

Main positive point: People want to be able to walk to neighborhood-serving retail, and if they live in an area without a neighborhood commercial strip right nearby, they should be able to have a corner store to serve their needs.

Ways OP could go further:

• Allow stores on properties besides literal "corners" and historically commercial buildings.
  
• Allow corner stores even within 500 feet of mixed-use zones.
  
• Let corner stores locate in row house and apartment zones (now R-5) as well; now they do not count.
  
• Let the Board of Zoning Adjustment waive more of the conditions in a special exception hearing.

Green Area Ratio

What's happening: New or substantially changed buildings will need to get a certain score of environmental sustainability features, such as grass, green roof, stormwater management, or green walls, based on the property's size.

This will help reduce stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect and potentially make DC a more pleasant place to live even as it grows. Some fear it will also further disadvantage urban development versus exurban greenfields.

Other changes

There are many other small tweaks in the zoning update, mostly good.

Some top positive changes:

• The new code requires more bicycle parking for buildings. There would be "long-term" spaces, such as in a locked room inside the building for employees or residents, and "short-term" outdoor racks for visitors or shoppers.
  
• Larger garages will have to have a number of car sharing spaces. Surface parking lots need canopy trees to shade some of the lot.
  
• Rules for building homes on alley lots become a little bit more permissive.

Proposals OP dropped:

• The previous proposal had the same limits on the actual size of a house but did not prescribe how many stories you can have inside (except as the fire code limits). In low-density zones, OP reinstated a limit of 3 stories.
  
• The original proposal let homeowners build a house of similar size to others nearby even if their lot has an extra-short rear yard. The Zoning Commission approved this idea but OP removed it.

The meeting is at Wilson High School, 3950 Chesapeake St NW by the Tenleytown Metro. It starts at 6:30 with a presentation by Harriet Tregoning, an "open house" format where you can ask OP staff questions, and then a "town hall" where people can speak to the entire group about their views.

Change is already here

The meetings start out with a presentation by the Office of Planning explaining the issues, the history of DC's zoning, and what they're hoping to tweak in the new code. After that, there is an "open house" format where you can write comments on post-its at various stations, and ask staff questions. They end the meeting with a more traditional "town hall" style where people can speak or ask questions one by one.

As they explain in the presentation, DC is very different than it was in 1950 and 1960, even though our zoning code is still substantially the same:

This last decade was the first time DC gained population since 1960, but the population is very different today. There are far more residents 60 years and older, and in the 20-34 age group, while there are far fewer children. The average household is a third smaller as well, which is why our existing stock of housing could be very full despite significant new construction, but still hold over 200,000 fewer people than in 1960.

What about the holes?

In its efforts to bend over backward and placate opponents, OP has left some significant gaps in proposals that are generally excellent steps forward. The upcoming meetings are also a good opportunity to ask OP to fill in the holes.

Parking minimums go away for mixed-use, non-residential, and high-density residential areas near transit and everywhere downtown, but that leaves what Matt Yglesias called the "Logan Circle gap": R-4 row house areas even right near transit. There's also a similar "Columbia Heights gap" and others.

There won't be parking minimums for residential buildings under 10 units, which covers most of the buildings in the "gaps," but this still leaves parking minimum requirements for some buildings right near Metro stations.

Corner stores will only be able to go in corner buildings or ones that have historically served as retail, and only 500 feet away from other retail. This leaves very few potential sites. Accessory dwellings can go in exterior garages but only if they already exist.

OP's early proposals had none of these holes. They added each one to try to address resident opposition and pare down the proposal to the absolute minimum necessary.

If the Zoning Commission approves the new code just as OP is proposing, it will be a major step forward for DC. It will fix many of the occasions when property owners have to ask for special exceptions to do things which match residents' desires and needs for our city. However, a number of these situations will remain, and we'll get less housing, bigger gaps between neighborhood stores, and more unnecessary parking than we might under a more expansive version.

Worse yet, if the Zoning Commission decides they need to "split the baby" and compromise between OP's plan and vocal opponents, we'll end up losing some essential component of the changes, since there's no fat left. There are almost no elements remaining that might be a good idea but maybe have some drawbacks, where you could go either way, since OP took all of those away already.

I'd have preferred to see OP leave the holes out, since we're better off without them, and also give zoning commissioners some room to compromise away elements that aren't absolutely essential. These public meetings are a chance to show OP that many residents not only support the zoning update but would support a less-timid variant as well.

Find the meeting nearest you

Here are the 5 remaining meetings over the next 2 weeks:

Saturday, January 5	10 am-noon	Ward 1	Harriet Tubman Elementary School	3101  13th St NW (1 block east of Columbia Hts Metro)
Tuesday, January 8	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 3	Wilson High School	3950 Chesapeake St NW (adjacent to Tenleytown Metro)
Wednesday, January 9	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 5	Foster Auditorium (Ely Building), Gallaudet University	800 Florida Ave NE (5 blocks east of NY Ave/Gallaudet Metro)
Saturday, January 12	10 am-noon	Ward 7	DOES Building, Room 2309/10	4058 Minnesota Ave NE (adjacent to Minnesota Ave Metro)
Wednesday, January 16	6:30-8:30 pm	Ward 4	Takoma Education Campus	7010 Piney Branch Rd NW (3 blocks west of Takoma Metro)

Which one can you go to? Let us know on this form and help us make sure we have good coverage at all the meetings!

At the new AIA center in the Penn Quarter, speaker after speaker thanked the Office of Planning for all their hard work on the zoning update, including many meaningful improvements, but also expressed hope that the update could do a little more. A few people asked about opportunities to adjust the height limit. One lamented new rules that limit a rooming house to 8 unrelated people.

The greatest number voiced disappointment at the giant "hole" in the likely transit zones around northern Logan Circle on the map:

The amount of development this "hole" and other exclusions affect is actually fairly small, since the excluded areas all have 1-2 family row houses and the zoning doesn't allow apartment buildings; it's also almost entirely built out today. Mainly, it means that any new non-residential use would have minimum parking requirements, even right next to a Metro station.

OP has very narrowly drawn the rules in this and many other ways to minimize the scope of each change. The zoning update allows corner stores, but subject to so many rules that there might be only a bare handful of corner stores that open in the entire city as a result. Accessory dwellings are allowed, but with strict limits on size, numbers of people, balconies, and a special exception requirement if it's in a new external building to ensure people don't build new garages just to house an accessory unit.

They did this to accommodate pushback from some neighborhoods, especially in Ward 3, for all the good that did them; emails from a few people in Chevy Chase haven't stopped claiming that this is all a nefarious plot to radically remake the District and force a car-free lifestyle upon everyone.

If anything, this update bends over too far to limit the scope of each change. The risk is that Zoning Commission members, hearing opponents, will decide to "split the baby" and find a "compromise" between OP's proposal and no change at all, when in fact, OP's proposal is also a major compromise from early drafts and even from what the Zoning Commission approved in principle in 2010.

The Zoning Commission agreed to a rule that if you have an unusually short lot, such as on a triangular block near a diagonal avenue, you could still build a house of typical depth even though that might break the required rear setback. OP abandoned that idea.

The Zoning Commission also approved parking maximums, but except for a rule that developers will need a special exception and Transportation Demand Management plan for surface lots over 100,000 square feet, OP removed maximums; the 2010 hearing report shows that OP was trying to decide between requiring the special exception and TDM plan for garages over 1,000 spaces, or a DDOT suggestion to require it for garages over 500 spaces away from transit and 250 spaces near transit. Ultimately, they chose neither.

The zoning update is still a meaningful step forward in making the District more affordable, better accommodating the many car-free new residents, and enhancing neighborhood amenities, but it's a small step that doesn't warrant the level of anger it's engendered in upper Northwest and which shouldn't become any smaller of a step than it already is.

If you live or work or even often visit Ward 8, come to the meeting tonight at Savoy Elementary, 2400 Shannon Place from 6:30-8:30. If you're near Glover Park or Cathedral Heights, please stop by the ANC meeting, 7 pm at Stoddert Elementary; they'll also be talking about residential parking. And if you're on Twitter, head online at noon tomorrow for the town hall.

Minimums

The 1958 zoning code mandated parking for new buildings on the assumption that everyone would be driving in the future. Like adequate public facilities ordinances in the suburbs, this subordinates development to automotive infrastructure. If there isn't enough room for cars, build nothing until there is.

Predictions that there would be only one mode of transportation, driving, in the future turned out to be wrong. We have Metro, buses, biking, walking, and more. Rather than accommodating demand, requirements to build parking instead create strong incentives for people to drive who wouldn't have otherwise, pushing the mode share in one unsustainable direction and making traffic worse for existing drivers.

Early working groups for the zoning update considered eliminating almost all or even all parking minimums, but facing pressure from some neighborhood groups, OP backed off and only now propose eliminating minimums for a few categories:

• Small residential buildings of up to 9 units
  
• Higher-density areas (today's R-5) and mixed-use/commercial zones near Metro or high-frequency bus lines ("transit zones")
  
• Production, Distribution and Repair (industrial) land
  
• Downtown

The final set of "transit zones" isn't set, but OP created this preliminary map showing where they probably will be:

Note that any low-density land, even right next to a Metro station, doesn't count, even most row house neighborhoods (designated R-4 today). An individual townhouse will be exempt under the small residential building requirement, but any non-residential building like a school, even next to a Metro station, will have to have as much parking as if it were nowhere near the Metro.

Property owners won't have to consult a transit timetable to decide if they are in a transit zone. Instead, the actual zoning category will differ. An apartment building area near transit would be an AT zone, while one far from transit would be an A. Likewise, commercial and mixed-use corridors are M zones without transit and MT zones in areas near transit.

Maximums

The Zoning Commission approved a general proposal to have some as-yet-undetermined parking maximums as well, but the Office of Planning has dropped this from the update.

One proposal had been to allow buildings to build a lot of parking if they want, but require that parking beyond a certain limit use a design that makes it possible to convert the space to other uses, like below-grade retail, offices, or even storage. However, developers said that this would add considerably to the cost of that below-grade space with no immediate benefit, and OP dropped this requirement.

One maximum remains in the draft code: surface parking lots can't exceed 100,000 square feet, or about 2.3 acres, as of right. By comparison, the surface parking lot for the Home Depot and other stores near Rhode Island Avenue Metro is about 350,000 square feet, or 8 acres.

However, anyone can ask for a special exception to exceed this limit if they create a Transportation Demand Management plan which DDOT approves. The BZA also has the ability to require screening and landscaping, or put requirements on where the curb cuts to enter and exit are.

While it's better for the zoning code to err on the side of less regulation rather than more, a requirement to have a TDM plan for very large parking facilities, and to go through some review process for the design, makes sense. The special exception process does not present an extremely high bar to getting things approved, but it does force people to go through a legal process.

For the individual homeowner wanting to rent out a garage, a special exception is a large burden, but for anyone building a 2.3-acre or larger parking lot, it's not likely to be. In fact, this would argue for a lower threshold above which the special exception and TDM process kicks in.

Design

A number of rules guide how a parking lot or structure can be designed. Parking lots over a certain size will have to have trees to create shade and reduce the urban heat island effect. Drive-through queueing lanes have to be a certain length. And so on.

You can read all about that stuff in Subtitle C, chapters 2106-2112.

One of the rules in the zoning update, which prohibits parking between buildings and the street in most areas, already became law in 2011, after the Office of Planning brought that particular chapter forward ahead of time as a text amendment.

It's great that many supporters of reducing burdensome parking minimums made it on Saturday, but we'll need to keep that up at the other meetings, especially Ward 3 on January 8 but also many other wards. Please let us know which meeting you can make!

As Lisa Sturtevant and Agnès Artemel have documented, the Washington region needs a lot more housing to keep up with job growth and replace retirees. In the District, they estimate demand for 122,613 new housing units by 2030. So far, we're not on track to build that, even with all the construction going on.

Building more new buildings or larger ones is one answer, but new and larger buildings do bring impacts; plus, they concentrate the impacts in one small area. There's an obvious, and easy, solution. Let people rent out their basements and garages in single-family neighborhoods and low-density row house zones where it's not already legal to split townhouses into multiple apartments.

These existing houses held more people per building 50 years ago, when families were larger, than they do today. Now, we have more seniors remaining in their houses as they age, but who don't need the space, but who don't have children and grandchildren living with them that they would have in 1950. More young singles and couples are waiting to have kids and could live in a smaller space like a garage or basement.

It seems like a no-brainer, but there's a lot of alarm in some of DC's wealthiest low-density neighborhoods. Some is just fear of change, or worry that parking will become more difficult, and sometimes, it's anxiety that poorer and browner people might start living nearby.

The details

The proposed accessory dwelling text is in Chapter 6 of subtitle D of the draft new regulations. In zones that don't allow 2 or more units per house already, a property owner can create one "accessory dwelling" on their lot, either in the main building or an existing "accessory" building such as a garage, but not both.

Which zones does this apply to? It'll be the single-family zones, plus zones currently called R-3, such as Georgetown, the northern part of Petworth, and parts of Ivy City and Anacostia. Those are in yellow, orange, and red on the big map here. All other row house zones, which make up the vast majority of row house neighborhoods, already allow at least 2 units per house or more; this won't change anything there.

To minimize the impact on neighbors, there are a lot of conditions attached to accessory dwellings:

601.4 Either the principal dwelling unit or accessory dwelling unit shall be occupied by the owner of the lot coterminous with the accessory dwelling.

602 ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT LOCATED WITHIN A PRINCIPAL BUILDING

602.1 In all R zones except [R-4 zones and on alley lots], one accessory dwelling unit shall be permitted by right in the principal dwelling, subject to the following provisions:

(a) The principal building shall have at least two thousand square feet (2,000 sq. ft.) of gross floor area, exclusive of private garage space;

(b) The accessory dwelling unit shall not occupy more than twenty five (25) percent of the gross floor area of the principal dwelling;

(c) No more than one entrance per story shall be located in each building façade that faces a street;

(d) The total number of persons that may occupy the building, including the principal and accessory dwelling units combined, shall not exceed six (6);

(e) An accessory dwelling unit may be added where a use category permitted as an accessory use is already located in the principal building; and

(f) The Board of Zoning Adjustment may grant, through special exception, approval to locate an accessory dwelling unit within a principal dwelling that does not meet up to two of the conditions of this section provided the applicant demonstrates that the application complies with the general special exception criteria of Y Chapter 8, and the general purposes and intent of this chapter.

603 ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT LOCATED WITHIN AN ACCESSORY BUILDING

603.1 In all R zones except [R-3 and R-4 zones and on Alley Lots], one accessory dwelling unit shall be permitted by right in an existing accessory building, subject to the following conditions:

(a) The accessory building shall conform to all applicable setback and lot occupancy regulations;

(b) The accessory building shall be legally existing on [EFFECTIVE DATE], and shall not be expanded.

(c) The floor area devoted to the accessory dwelling unit shall not exceed 900 square feet;

(d) The foot print of the accessory dwelling building may not exceed 450 square feet.

(e) The accessory dwelling unit within an accessory building shall have pedestrian access to a public street via an alley, yard, an easement recorded with the Office of the Surveyor, or any combination of these pathways;

(f) The closest façade of the accessory building shall be separated from the closest façade of the principal building by a distance of thirty (30) feet minimum;

(g) A deck or balcony is permitted as a portion of any story of the accessory building; provided:

(1) The deck or balcony is located entirely within the permitted footprint of the accessory building; and
(2) The deck or balcony is oriented so as to not face a principal building on an adjoining property in an R zone; and

(h) An accessory building that houses an accessory dwelling unit may not be used at the same time for any other accessory use, other than as a private vehicle garage for either occupant of the property.

(i) The Board of Zoning Adjustment may grant, through special exception, approval to locate an accessory dwelling unit within an accessory building that does not meet up to two of the conditions of this section provided the applicant shall demonstrate that the proposal complies with the general special exception criteria of Y Chapter 8, and the general purposes and intent of this chapter.

One of the most key provisions here is that the owner has to live in either the main house or accessory unit. In a long letter to the Current, chief opponent Linda Schmitt talked about how when she was growing up, people looked out for the kids in the neighborhood because they knew them, and letting the neighborhood turn into one filled with "renters" (a code word, perhaps?) would destroy this. But it can't, because the owners will still live there, and their tenants could only add even more "eyes on the street" (or backyard).

The condition (b) in 603.1 is new since earlier drafts. Schmitt and other opponents raised alarm that this provision could start a boom of people building new garage-type buildings in their backyards to rent out. That seems a little unlikely, but the Office of Planning nevertheless changed the code to say that only existing, not new, garages and other accessory buildings can have accessory dwellings without a special exception hearing.

That hasn't stopped Schmitt from claiming that OP is "driving a relentless agenda" to, among other things, "allow 22-foot high expansion of garages for apartments or enterprises of varying descriptions. That's higher than second storey windows!" Actually, the existing code lets accessory buildings be 20 feet, and OP says "we're proposing an extra two feet to account for the slope of a roof." 2 feet doesn't seem like much of a "relentless agenda," but okay.

This does mean that even if someone builds a garage 2 years after the new code goes into place, sells the house, and 20 years from now someone wants to rent it out, they won't be able to. I'd suggest changing 603.1(b) to also allow renting out accessory buildings some number of years, like 5 or 10, after the accessory building is built; nobody is going to build one just to wait a decade and then rent it.

Also, why should it be okay to rent out a space above a garage if you're using the garage for car storage, but not if the ground floor is an art studio for the owner? The Board of Zoning Adjustment can give a "special exception" to this provision, but that's a cumbersome process; it still seems to unnecessarily privilege car parking.

Overall, OP has created an excellent proposal that bends over backward to accommodate existing residents' legitimate concerns while avoiding some of the more onerous limitations of Montgomery County's proposal. It's still getting fierce opposition from the vast majority of posters on lists like Chevy Chase's, along with the usual snide comments about people under 40 daring to participate in civic discourse.

Some areas, especially in that part of the city, have many seniors living in big houses. That means these blocks are far emptier of children and other people than they were when those residents were younger. Some want to be able to rent out parts of their homes to get more income, while others simply want to keep out the same kinds of people who used to live there or they themselves used to be. We shouldn't dismiss those views, but neither should public policy cater to this desire.

Please go to tomorrow's meeting, or the ones Tuesday and Thursday, and either support, or ask OP to further loosen, their proposals for accessory dwellings, corner stores and more. Tell us here which of these meetings, or the ones in January, you can make, so we can all be sure that there's a strong contingent of support for a growing and more livable DC at each one.

Proposal allows corner stores in row house areas

The corner store proposal only applies to the moderate density row house zones, currently designated R-3 (example: Georgetown), R-4 (example: Capitol Hill) and R-5-A (example: Marshall Heights).

It does not change anything in detached house house zones (like Chevy Chase), attached house zones (like Queens Chapel), or the denser row house zones like Dupont Circle.

In the below map, the zones that could get corner stores appear in red, purple, and light blue.

List of restrictions aim to protect against impacts

Beyond limiting the proposal to a subset of zones, there is a further set of rules limiting corner stores to certain buildings, certain parts of neighborhoods, and certain types of stores. Here is the draft text, from the latest draft OP has released:

402.2 Arts Design and Creation, Food and Alcohol Service, Retail, and Service uses are permitted by-right [in the relevant zones] subject to the following conditions:

(a) There shall be no Mixed Use or Mixed Use Transit zones within five hundred feet (500 ft.) of the lot.

(b) There shall be no more than three other Arts Design and Creation, Retail, or Service uses and no more than one other Food and Alcohol Service use within five hundred feet (500 ft.) of the lot.

(c) If the lot is an interior or through lot, the building must have been built:

1. Prior to [INSERT DATE HERE]; and
2. For the purpose of a non-residential use, as established by permit records or other historical documents accepted by the Zoning Administrator.

(d) Except for the Arts Design and Creation uses listed below, the use shall not occupy or use any space above the ground story:

1. Apartment accessory to an artist studio; and
2. Artist live-work space.

(e) The use shall not exceed one thousand, two hundred square feet (1,200 sq.ft.) in total floor area.

(f) The use shall not operate between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

(g) The maximum number of employees, including the owner, on site at any time shall be three.

(h) Only one external sign may be displayed on the building's facade, provided that the sign is not illuminated and is flush-mounted.

(i) All storage of materials and garbage shall occur indoors.

(j) Any parking shall be fully screened from all adjacent properties, streets and alleys in a manner consistent with § 802.1.

(k) For any Food and Alcohol Service use, there shall be no sale of liquor for on-site consumption.

Arts Design and Creation uses may also be allowed as accessory uses subject to the conditions of E § 404.1.

In the zones now called R-5-A, the densest of the zones allowing corner stores, there are a few differences. Condition (c), which limits stores to actual corner buildings or buildings that were historically commercial, doesn't apply. The total size can be up to 2,000 square feet instead of 1,200.

Finally, it adds that:

The Board of Zoning Adjustment may waive up to three (3) of the conditions of this subsection by special exception, subject to Subtitle Y Chapter 8, provided that E 402.3(a) [no mixed-use zones within 500 feet] and (c) [nothing above the ground story except for arts] may not be waived.

OP listened to your previous feedback on restriction (f), the limit on hours, and pushed the allowable hours to 7 am to 10 pm. The initial proposal was for 8 am to 7 pm, and many of you said that this would make it impossible for many people who work to patronize any stores that might open.

This is a start, but possibly still too restrictive

OP is treading very lightly, because there is a lot of nervousness in some quarters about the proposal. Ironically, though, most of the pushback has come from people in single-family zones, like upper Northwest, where this won't change a thing.

A lot of people don't actually know what kind of zone they live in. I was speaking to one councilmember who thought this wasn't a good idea because the block where the member lives wouldn't be right for a corner store. However, upon further discussion, it turned out that the block was part of an R-2 zone, where this wouldn't apply.

In the actual row house zones, this could give people many new options for local retail. I worry, however, that it's so strict that we'll get almost no stores.

The limit to corner buildings and historically commercial buildings leaves few options. Corners are better, but they're almost all occupied now. It might take a long time for more than vanishingly few corner buildings to come on the market, and for someone to want to open a store there.

The restriction that the store can't be near a mixed-use zone (now called a commercial zone) is intended to keep the stores from competing with existing local commercial condos corridors. That makes sense in most places, but often there are mixed-use zoned areas with no or little actual retail space.

Florida Avenue around LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale, for example, is "mixed-use zoned" along its length, but has very few commercial buildings. There's no way to even get an exception for these. Also, the zones now called "Special Purpose" (SP-1 and SP-2) will right be "mixed use" zones under the new rules, but there's a great variety of buildings in those zones (such as New Hampshire Avenue in Dupont), not necessarily commercial.

A better rule would simply count actual stores nearby, instead of counting land zoned that could possibly hold stores if it doesn't.

I would also suggest having the rules let the BZA waive up to 3 of the restrictions even in the R-3 and R-4 zones, and making all restrictions eligible. The special exception process lets neighbors object to changes, and so if a store wants to open near a mixed-use zone with no actual retail space, or in a non-corner building, the hearing provides an opportunity to oppose it.

Finally, this should apply to R-5-B zones as well. There isn't a lot of R-5-B that's not near commercial corridors, but no reason to exclude the areas that do exist.

What do you think?

Please post your thoughts in the comments and try to attend one of the upcoming meetings. These meetings are the best chance to get more positive changes into the document before it moves on to the Zoning Commission.

After OP hears from residents, they will revise the proposal in a more or less progressive direction. Then, they will submit text to the Zoning Commission, the hybrid federal-local body that has the final say on all zoning issues. The ZC is unlikely to make the proposal any more progressive than it is, but they might dial it back if they get too much opposition.

Cody Rice alerted us to this month's column by Capitol Hill Restoration Society President Janet Quigley:

The Capitol should have been beautiful on this clear night, but my view was blocked by a cement bridge connecting two high-rise office towers, built soon after the Height Act was repealed, on either side of the avenue. ... Across 7th Street loomed a large platinum building that looked like a crab. "Maybe those twisted corbels weren't so bad after all," I thought, as a streetcar lurched up 7th toward the car barn formerly known as the Eastern Market.

[Tunni's] moved to a bigger space at 9th and Penn. The mechanic who usedta be there closed up when they banned cars in the District a coupla years ago.

We walked down North Carolina Avenue toward Folger Park, past blocks of darkened houses sporting brass plaques for every imaginable trade association. I noticed two vacant school buildings and asked, "Where are the kids?" Clarence scowled at me as if I should know better. "Where do you think they'd be? All the houses have gone commercial and the biggest apartment built is a one-bedroom. They've moved away, along with their families and seniors and people who need affordable housing.

But they get a big kick out of coming back to visit Union Station. That casino in the main hall makes everyone a winner." A train blasted its horn as it rumbled by on Virginia Avenue, followed by another, and then another.

Two main themes jump out here. First is the evident, dripping contempt for all things transit. Streetcars "lurch" down the street and displace, rather than enhance, a market that was originally built around the streetcar.

Meanwhile, it's a tragedy that a beloved tavern was able to grow to take over a former mechanic's shop. An industrial use for cars is nostalgia; a train is a blight.

It's most ironic because streetcars were a historic element of Capitol Hill, as Topher Mathews pointed out. One might think a "restoration" society would want to restore historic transportation systems.

But before we mock this story too much, it illustrates an important second point: the way many people feel even small changes could start down a slippery slope to chaos. Make the smallest tweak in the Height Act, and in the blink of an eye there will be towers and concrete bridges astride Pennsylvania Avenue. Allow a few corner stores in residential neighborhoods, and before long there'll be nothing left but trade associations and one-bedroom apartments.

It's not only a rhetorical device; there are people who feel that each and every zoning rule, no matter how outdated or arbitrary or ill-fitting our neighborhoods' current needs, represents a hard-fought bulwark against ruin. The District is already changing rapidly; many fear a small push send it out of control.

That's the sentiment DeBonis captured in his article:

District planning officials are rewriting the city's zoning rules for the first time in 54 years, a process that has hastened anxieties about growth and at times has erupted into a pitched debate about the future of the city.

The proposed changes are small—allowing a corner store here, fewer parking spaces there—but the debate has grown in recent months ... The process, underway for four years, has been complicated as the debate has grown to encompass anxieties over city growth that have little to do with the zoning proposals—the proliferation of bicycle amenities, new parking policies and a proposal to relax the federal law restricting building heights.

Thus, even fairly timid changes have become an epic battle.

The problem is that the zoning code is deeply flawed. It doesn't actually reflect the historic patterns of the city, unless you consider only construction after 1960 to be historic. It doesn't prohibit most of the things many residents really dislike, like ugly pop-ups or teardowns and McMansions, but it does prohibit the land use patterns that created places like Capitol Hill in the first place.

The code is too confusing and many restrictions burden homeowners even from making changes that enjoy near-universal support. Without fixes, the District won't stop changing, it just might grow and evolve in an even worse way thanks to restrictions designed to force people into suburban patterns of living back when planners thought anything else was "obsolete."

It would be wonderful if one could assuage these fears, or at least convince people that the zoning update's actual changes won't bring Armageddon. So far, despite the Office of Planning's efforts to patiently explain and re-explain plans at an endless series of neighborhood and community association meetings almost all in Ward 3, where the opposition centers, it hasn't worked; opponents keep repeating false and alarmist claims about the secret conspiracy to force everyone out of cars.

The only thing we can do is try to educate city leaders and convince them to let the process move forward. That's why it's crucial to attend one of the upcoming zoning update meetings this Saturday 12/8 in Southwest Waterfront, Tuesday 12/11 in Penn Quarter, or Thursday 12/13 in Anacostia. And pledge to testify when the hearings begin before the Zoning Commission.

The 3 December meetings are Saturday, 12/8 from 10 am-noon at 1100 4th St. SW (Waterfront Metro); Tuesday, 12/11 from 6:30-8:30 pm at 421 7th St. NW (Gallery Place or Archives); and Thursday, 12/13 from 6-8 pm at Savoy Elementary, 2400 Shannon Pl. SE (Anacostia Metro).

If you go to one public event this year, please go to one of these. Sign Pro-DC's petition to show your support and receive updates about the meetings.

Know of a good event for Greater Greater Washington readers that's not listed here? Post it in the comments!

The 8 zoning update meetings will become another crucible for different views to duke it out. It's already been happening for months on neighborhood email lists in Chevy Chase, Tenleytown, and Cleveland Park, and in public meetings for Montgomery County's zoning update, which is confronting similar issues.

There's been a lot of emotion in the emails. Often, though, people are upset about a lot of changes that have little or nothing to do with the zoning update. It's even a little ironic that this zoning update, which is quite timid in many ways and which bends over backward to change little in single-family neighborhoods, is engendering so much ire.

Some of this passion stems from outright misinformation, like the emails from Chevy Chase resident Linda Schmitt, who's become the chief organizer against the zoning update. She came out guns blazing this spring against the zoning update, even though about half of the things she claims the zoning update will change aren't actually true.

An email last week on the Chevy Chase list continued the same pattern, with well-written, scary, and largely false warnings about OP schemes to "break down the barrier between 'residential' and 'commercial'" (the very limited "corner store" provision wouldn't even apply in Chevy Chase or other single-family neighborhoods at all), "allow 22-foot high expansion of garages for apartments" (a provision which OP has since removed), and "eliminate automobiles" (utter hyperbole).

Some of the replies there and in previous discussions cited changes that had absolutely nothing to do with the zoning update. Maybe they were about teardowns and McMansions, which have already been coming to Chevy Chase, and which the zoning update won't hasten one bit. (Had residents constructively suggested ways to curb this during the early phases of the update, instead of just trying to discredit the entire process, maybe they could have done something about the problem instead of leaving it as a boogeyman.)

Even if these changes have little or nothing to do with the zoning update, they are real for people who are scared about change. The District (and nearby suburban jurisdictions) is indeed changing. It's been the policy of at least the last 3 administrations to try to attract more residents to DC. Many find this exciting, while others find it frightening.

When the Office of Planning is proposing a fairly broad though conservative change to the zoning code, especially when some neighborhood leaders are constantly accusing them of a secret conspiracy to radically remake DC, it's going to draw a lot of passionate testimony, whether relevant to the specifics of the zoning update or not.

That's why you also need to attend. The upcoming meetings will be critical in either pushing OP to retreat further, or to stand their ground, or even to advance in some important ways where the zoning update doesn't do enough. They will shape the media coverage of the issue and give Zoning Commissioners an early sense of public opinion.

Please mark your calendars and try to attend the one nearest you, or more than one.

• Saturday, December 8, 10 am-noon at 1100 4th St, SW, 2nd floor (in Ward 6)
  
• Tuesday, December 11, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 2
  
• Thursday, December 13, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 8
  
• Saturday, January 5, 10 am-noon in Ward 1
  
• Tuesday, January 8, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 3
  
• Wednesday, January 9, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 5
  
• Saturday, January 12, 10 am-noon in Ward 7
  
• Wedneday, January 16, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 4

OP says they will release locations for the other December meetings this week. There is one per ward, but you don't have to go to the one in your own ward; all meetings are for all residents.

Also, sign up for Pro-DC below to get reminders about these meetings and updates about what you can do to help support positive changes in DC.

I already had a long-standing addiction to their wasabi-roast beef sandwich on freshly baked flatbread. So, good news! I'd get another lunchtime option, plus a place to meet someone over good coffee, or to work when I need to get out of the house.

That's when I learned about Cleveland Park's anti-restaurant zoning overlay. A couple of decades ago, the neighborhood lobbied for a cap on the number of restaurants. Specifically, no more than 25% of the linear footage fronting the Connecticut Avenue commercial strip could hold any kind of food establishment—including restaurants, bars, takeout, delis, coffee shops, or sandwich shops.

Così, after briefly floating some creative legal arguments that would have exempted them from the cap, decided a zoning fight wasn't worth the trouble and pulled out.

To summarize, we had:

• a sandwich shop that wanted to sell me sandwiches;
  
• a landlord ready to rent space to the sandwich shop;
  
• citizens ready to take jobs as making sandwiches; and
  
• me, a customer, willing to buy sandwiches on a regular basis.

The neighborhood would have gotten another "third space", a comfortable and informal local gathering place. The city would have gotten tax and licensing revenue. Così's vendors, suppliers, and contractors would have made money, and so on—a cascade of voluntary, mutually beneficial economic transactions that would have left everyone involved better off.

But no. Instead we got a shuttered storefront for two full years. No jobs for anyone, no sandwiches for me, a landlord losing money on a vacant space, and an increasingly depressing-looking commercial strip.

Why?

At this point it would be very easy to turn dismissive and snarky about Cleveland Park's comfortable, out-of-touch, selfish residents who oppose everything. But here's the thing: Since that time I've gotten to know these people. They are among my neighbors and my friends. They're good and generous people, and they're not fools or cranks. They're proud of their history of local activism and they're trying to do what they think is best for the neighborhood.

They deserve a fair hearing for the strongest arguments they've made for the restaurant cap. I still think this is still a bad law. More broadly, this provides a good case study in how neighborhood politics can go wrong, and what we can do about it.

The original rationale for the restaurant overlay involves two main arguments.

1. Cleveland Park's commercial strip should provide first for the needs of the neighborhood. Restaurants can pay higher rents, so they crowd out small and diverse neighborhood-serving retail and services. Typical quote: "We have enough restaurants, what we need is a bookstore and a hardware store."
2. Restaurants are more likely to bring in people from outside the neighborhood; a critical mass of restaurants would turn Cleveland Park into a drinking and dining destination, creating traffic and parking problems. Typical quote: "Removing the cap could turn Cleveland Park into another Adams Morgan that lacks a neighborhood feel."

To the first point, the overlay hasn't worked. It hasn't given us the retail landscape we imagined, but has instead given us empty storefronts and tanning salons. To the second point, I'd suggest that these fears are exaggerated and not realistic. There are better ways to address parking problems than keeping amenities out of the neighborhood.

Most importantly, though, it's fundamentally unfair to allow a minority of neighbors to use the government to impose their consumer preferences on all of us. The District of Columbia doesn't want the restaurant cap, and neither does Cleveland Park. It's time to get rid of it.

It isn't working

We all want a lively, diverse retail landscape. The problem is that zoning laws are a blunt instrument: They can only say "no." Zoning can prevent business, but it can't create business. The overlay has been around for 23 years now, Cleveland Park is still waiting for that hardware store and that bookstore, and neither one is ever going to come.

It's not hard to see why, now more than ever: We're halfway between two legendary local bookstores, Politics & Prose and Kramerbooks. Established independent bookstores and big corporate chains alike are going out of business in droves. As much as we might wish the world was otherwise, the economic rationale for retail bookstores has been nearly destroyed by the one-two punch of Amazon Prime and the Amazon Kindle.

A hardware store isn't much more likely: there's also competition nearby and the retail hardware sector is still subject to the economic forces that are leading us to the End of Retail As We Know It.

The long-term future of neighborhood retail, in Cleveland Park as everywhere else, is in products, services, or experiences that people can't obtain over the Internet or receive by UPS. If we don't allow more restaurants, cafés, bars, or delis, what does that leave? We have a couple of grocery stores and a CVS and a Walgreen's. And there are shops that are doing well by offering unique and carefully curated selections (like Wake Up Little Suzy) or advice from helpful specialists (like Potomac River Running).

But that still leaves a lot of space to fill. After years of empty storefronts, that void has now been filled by an abundance of nail salons, tanning salons, cellphone shops, and the like. That's not exactly the sort of "diverse retail" anyone had in mind.

I do wish we had a bookstore and a hardware store, and there's nothing wrong with you and I indulging in wishful thinking. But there is something wrong with building public policy on a foundation of wishful thinking.

We've made it illegal to add any more food establishments, in the hope that that would magically produce lots of charming independent retail. But no sane entrepreneur is going to give us the stores we say we want. The unintended consequence is that we're filling our storefronts with the dregs of the service sector.

It's a solution to a nonexistent problem

The second argument stems from fear: Fear of more traffic, fear of changing the neighborhood's character, fear of becoming "the next Adams Morgan."

Let's not flatter ourselves. That's not going to happen. Adams Morgan isn't even the new Adams Morgan any more; the district's hipsters have long since moved on to U Street and H Street and 9th Street. What those neighborhoods have in common is the energy that comes from cultural and economic diversity. How do I say this nicely: Cleveland Park's respectable citizens are ... boring. No one goes out of their way to party in a neighborhood full of middle-aged white lawyers and minivan-driving families.

Anyway, Adams Morgan's weekend crowds never went there for the fine dining, for the cafés, or the sandwich shops: They were going for the bars and nightclubs; and the liquor licensing process gives neighbors all the tools they need to keep those kinds of establishments in check.

One last thing about the "not-another-Adams-Morgan" trope: I lived in Adams Morgan for years, and while the twice-weekly onslaught of drunken kids was a big nuisance, the entertainment venues didn't crowd out neighborhood retail.

To the contrary, the neighborhood has a diverse and vibrant retail scene that puts Cleveland Park to shame: A slew of trendy women's clothing stores, shoe stores, home decor shops, music stores, ethnic groceries, and gift shops. And the best running store, the best frame shop, the best bike shop, and the best florist in DC. And standard neighborhood amenities like grocery stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, and convenience stores. And, yes, a hardware store and a bookstore.

None of us wants more congestion or more cars parked on our side streets. And none of us wants teenagers from the suburbs puking on our lawns. But allowing more food establishments in the neighborhood will do none of those things. Restaurant, cafés, or delis are not more likely than other businesses to cause traffic or parking problems. People can always take the metro or walk to eat out; but they're more likely to use their cars to get to a hardware store, a grocery store, a wine store, or a vacuum cleaner repair shop.

It's not fair

The most important argument for getting rid of the restaurant cap is that it's not fair. It's not fair for consumers, and it's not fair to our local landlords and merchants.

The restaurant cap imposes the economic preferences of one group of consumers on everyone else, and that's not right.

Some people eat out more than others. And there's been a generational shift in dining preferences: For our parents' generation, restaurants were for rich people or for special occasions. In contrast, my wife and I eat out all the time, sometimes with our boys and sometimes without, and we rely on neighborhood take-out for the occasional weeknight meal. The market is perfectly able to sort out those preferences and figure out the "right" number of restaurants for the demographics of any given location.

The 25% cap is also unfair to landlords and merchants. If you happen to already own space occupied by a restaurant, you're "grandfathered in" and you can replace that restaurant with another as a matter of right. All else being equal, the retail space right next door is worth less, for the arbitrary reason that it doesn't happen to already house a food establishment.

When a food establishment leaves the neighborhood for whatever reason, their landlord has every incentive to turn away retail or service tenants, even if that means keeping the space vacant for years. When McDonald's left Cleveland Park in 2004, the 2-story space—one of the most beautiful and valuable spots on the strip—remained empty for 7 years.

People wouldn't start restaurants if people didn't want to go to restaurants. The fact that so many people want to open food establishments in Cleveland Park is a reflection of the desire of the people of Cleveland Park and the people of the District of Columbia for more food establishments. And yet here we are using the coercive power of the government to keep those food establishments from happening. That's not right.

The neighborhood doesn't want it

The Office of Planning would lift the restaurant cap if were persuaded that Cleveland Park doesn't want it. And it's not what the neighborhood wants, at least not any more. The Cleveland Park listserv held a survey on the question in 2008 and again just recently. In both cases voters expressed about a 2:1 preference for allowing more restaurants.

This is a classic example of one of the most frustrating aspects of local politics: A highly motivated minority can easily end up overruling a passive majority. A handful of angry people shouting "No" can often carry the day, even if the predominant sentiment is "Yes" or "Sure, why not?"

We've all seen this happen in Cleveland Park and elsewhere in DC. We saw it with the Wisconsin Avenue Giant controversy, and I worry that the same phenomenon will hamper the current effort to bring DC's zoning code into the 21st century.

So if you're OK with allowing more restaurants, cafés, diners, delis, ice cream parlors, sandwich shops, and other food establishments, you need to speak up. If you want lively and walkable neighborhoods, they're not going to just happen as long as leaders only hear from an outspoken minority.

If you agree, and you're a DC resident, please sign this petition to send a message to key local officials.