Blog Archives

Fairfax County’s Response to COVID-19

Part one in a series, we will examine the effect of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on the Fairfax County, Va., commercial real estate development community.  The below provides insight into the status of critical Fairfax agencies as of March 25, 2020. About The Authors

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The District’s Comprehensive Plan Amendment Process Is Starting Up Again: First Vote on July 9, 2019

The Comprehensive Plan amendment process is lurching back to life and the DC Council’s first vote is scheduled for July 9, 2019.  As we noted last month, the District of Columbia’s Office of Planning (“OP”) launched its DC2ME survey to solicit input on the ‘values’ that District residents want to be reflected in the amendment process. Also, OP had a presence at the recent Capital Pride parade and 11th Annual DC Housing Expo and Home Show to obtain additional feedback on the ‘values’. According to agency staff, further outreach is scheduled for this summer but specific times and locations have yet to be made public. This outreach broke a long period of dormancy since the 12+-hour District Council hearing in

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Comprehensive Plan Amendment Process Now Seeks to Evaluate the “Values” of DC Residents

It’s ALIVE!  The Comprehensive Plan amendment process comes back: Almost three years on, the District of Columbia’s Office of Planning (“OP”) wants District residents to identify key values to direct the Comprehensive Plan amendment process. As many of our readers know, the Comprehensive Plan is a 20-year framework that guides future growth and development.  As part of the ongoing amendment process, OP wants to know: “What are the ‘values’ of District residents?”  “How should those ‘values’ direct the District’s long-term planning?” Spearheaded by its new director, Andrew Trueblood, OP launched an online survey called “DC2ME” to find out.  The survey will be “live” only until June 30, 2019, so now is the time to act. The online survey asks participants

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DC Mayor Challenges Residents and Agencies to Remove Barriers Preventing More Housing

It all started in 1894, when the famous architect Thomas Franklin Schneider designed and constructed the Cairo.  At 164 feet tall, the Cairo was the first residential skyscraper in the District of Columbia (the “District”), causing an uproar among the District’s residents.  The concern was the safety of the structure of such buildings and the ability to fight flames in the event of a fire.  In response, the District’s Board of Commissioners passed a regulation limiting the height of all future residential buildings.  By 1899, Congress passed a law, amended in 1910, commonly known as the Height Act, limiting the height of District buildings to 130 feet. While the fear that skyscrapers in the District could cause the whole city

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Office of Zoning, Office of Planning on the Hot Seat

On February 28th, 2018, the DC Council conducted oversight hearings for the DC Office of Zoning (“OZ”) and the DC Office of Planning (“OP”).  Oversight hearings provide the DC Council and members of the public an opportunity to ask OZ and OP officials questions about their performance over the past year. Sara Bardin, Director of OZ, presented that there was an 8% increase in Board of Zoning Adjustment (“BZA”) and Zoning Commission (“ZC”) cases over the last year and discussed upcoming updates that will allow automatic “sun/shade studies” to be conducted on the OZ website (which is still in its testing phase).  DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson engaged Director Bardin, as well as ZC Chair Anthony Hood and BZA Chair

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EventsDC Seeking Development Partner For RFK Market Hall

EventsDC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, recently released a Request For Expressions of Interest (“RFEI”) for the development of a 65,000 square foot Market Hall on the RFK site.  EventsDC seeks a development partner for this initial phase of the comprehensive redevelopment of the RFK campus, located next to Kingman Park in the revitalizing Hill East neighborhood.  Market Hall is expected to offer market, concession, and restaurant space for neighborhood residents and visitors from around the region. Market Hall will be one component of the initial phase of redevelopment over the next 2 – 5 years, redevelopment which will also include: Three multi-purpose recreation and community playing fields, totaling about 5 acres, available to

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deCOding CO-LIVING in DC

Community housing, boarding houses, and communal living arrangements have been around since the 1840s, as indicated by a brochure by the Academy of American Poets when it identified the boarding houses where Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe rested their heads.  Even though such concepts long have been a part of society, co-living facilities are receiving new scrutiny in an unregulated gray area of DC zoning regulations, as more developers become interested in meeting this segment of the market. You may be asking yourself, “What is co-living, exactly?”  Co-living is a modern form of housing where residents intentionally share living space and, ostensibly, choose to live around a shared set of interests.  Those interests in many cases revolve around guiding principles

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Real Estate, Zoning & Land Use

Cozen O’Connor has represented residential, commercial, retail, and industrial builders in the development and redevelopment of building lots and millions of square feet of real estate. Our team handles every aspect of the zoning, land use, and development approvals process, from obtaining building permits and variances to negotiating stormwater management and traffic plans.

Head of the DC Zoning Group & Blog Editor