Citizen involvement in the development review process in DC

In response to the Greater Greater Washington post "Mendelson endorses overlay purity over neighborhood vibrancy," there is an involved thread in which I have written a number of responses. The position of the thread comes down to:

1. Citizens use the process of reviewing development projects at each and every point to be obstructive and pity the poor developer who has to deal with this; versus

2. Developers and their representatives can be just as obstructive and misguided and venal, and even worse -- creators/designers of not very good projects -- and there needs to be a better way to improve the projects.

Of course this is an overly reductive statement of the two positions, made in fun. I am going to reprint my latest response (with a couple edits of typos and unclear points), but it's worth your going to the thread and reading it all.
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So my morning in bed realization is that yes, this thread proves that the process for citizen involvement in development decision making, and the process by which developers create projects internally, and the process by which the city provides input, reviews and then approves projects is very much flawed.

Sure I write these overarching posts on process all the time such as on community benefits and the planning process (and transit planning, and culture planning, and tourism planning, etc.).

This is harder, about the specifics of "development review," because a number of pieces of the process are "black box" -- processes that I don't know much about -- e.g., all the meetings that a developer will have with the Office of Planning and with the Deputy Mayor's Office/Planning and Economic Development are private. So are the meetings with City Councilmembers (for tax abatements too). And of course, all the internal meetings with architects on the part of the developer are private as well.

Plus, there is one "dialectic" between whether citizens are even willing to consider development (David, William), which is different from the position (the other dialectic) that Tom and I are coming from, that many projects need "a lot o' fixin'" and there aren't good ways within the extant process to address this.

This post focuses on the process, presuming that a project will happen. (I have written plenty elsewhere about fixing how people think about extending the qualities of livability in the city and how that impacts development decision making both at the neighborhood and citywide levels.)

When I was on the 6C planning and zoning committee, I tried to get the committee to regularize how they did things in terms of focusing on design, both for the project specifically and the context (place aspects). I wasn't that successful at it. Even if I was more successful than most...

I suggested we subscribe to _Planning Commissioners Journal_ and _Zoning News_ (the latter from the APA) and I pointed out that citizen members of bodies such as an ANC qualify for a special very discounted membership rate from the Am. Planning Association. I communicated about the various Main Street trainings (the Main Street training session on design is especially relevant to planning and zoning deliberations) but no one not involved in a Main Street program ever went. We never subscribed to the publications. (And note my many posts about why the city should develop an Urban Information Center (Dallas Public Library) library section comparable to what Dallas does.)

And I suggested to various bodies such as the Office of Planning that we needed a series of talks/presentations on these issues (so yes, I am saying that the Coalition for Smarter Growth presentations don't suffice), such as the one by Cy Paumier, author of the book _Creating a Vibrant City Center_ (at the time he consulted for the Downtown DC BID)--I specifically suggested this to the then planning director and the director of the Downtown BIDS and got no response whatsoever.

I probably distributed this item, the Urban Evaluation Form, from the Design Advocacy Group in Philadelphia, at least once

(Now, I also try to use this one, from a Main Street publication on community design assessment.)

And I distributed to my fellow committee members publications such as these:

-- Getting to Smart Growth (I)
-- Getting to Smart Growth II

But I could never get them to take this issue as seriously as I thought it needed to be taken. We never developed a formal tool by which to evaluate projects, along the lines of the DAG tool.

Plus, as membership of the committee changed, you got even more people who were willing to be stooges of developers (this can be a real problem with ANCs of certain demographics) and/or were car-centric -- the chair of the committee for 2005 (I left at the end of that year) was big on curb cuts and lay bys for office buildings, e.g., for the office building on the north side of the 500 block of Massachusetts Ave., which we got to review as part of the large tract review process, fortunately he lost, but not at the committee level, at the OP level.

And note that many ANCs do not have committees, or do not allow for citizens to be on committees reviewing planning and zoning matters. How much worse is the process in those neighborhoods? (i.e., Ward 5 ANCs)

And then not all the people who did think design was important were willing to be hard ass about it, and stand up to elected ANC commissioners who wanted to bend over on anything and everything because the project was purportedly going to do X, or Y, or Z. (I used to call this graft, but that is slander or libel, now I call it "green love." But green love can be pretty cheap, a donation to a block club and many an ANC commissioner becomes "owned.")

But all this is dependent on whether or not the developer takes the process seriously to begin with. Almost any project that hires John Ray, you can rest assured that the developer is more interested in gaming the process through the ex-Councilmember's access to political elites, than they are with producing a quality project. Etc.

And the Zoning process at the ZC and the BZA is a legal process, very much defined, with very little give and take possibilities for anyone other than the Office of Planning and the developer. These parties can say things (as can City Councilmembers and other executive branch offices) and in most instances, there is no opportunity afforded to citizens to respond. So if John Ray (and people like him) prevaricates, you can't say anything, and if you try to, you get shot down by the Chair of the body.

But because an ANC has "great weight" at these hearings, and automatic party status, this is why the ANC process has ended up to be important. Because it is the only way that citizens have a required and mandated voice in the proceedings. But again, the success of being able to use this lever is very much dependent on how good the ANC process is, and how good the ANC representation is, and whether or not the ANC Commissioners really have any clue to begin with
(many, such as in Ward 5, do not) and can represent these positions, follow the proceedings, interrogate witnesses adequately, etc., at a hearing. (added)

While an ANC is notified about BZA and ZC (and I think Large Tract Review projects) actions and this is supposed to trigger a formal review and consideration process, there is no guidance and assistance provided to help structure the process.

I am thinking about how I once was involved in a lawsuit, and there was a step in the process that was automatic mediation.

There is no "workshop" part of the process, ever, and there should be. A kind of charrette process (although I think the term and idea of a charrette is overused, there are many other equivalent processes) where everyone is open, people have their say, and the developers and architects are truly engaged.

That is almost what Abdo Dev. did with all the meetings they had in advance of ANC review, which of course, which occurred before the hearings before the Zoning Commission.

But it was still more happenstance than formal. And fortunately, the architects (Phil Esocoff & Associates) were open to input. That for the most part, is exceptional.

(This is what the design method is all about, and it is very different from the "rational planning" process in which planners are trained. The design method is iterative and includes a step for prototyping. The planning method considers a couple scenarios and from the choices, picks the "best" one. There isn't a feedback loop built into the process the same way there is in the design method, or systems analysis generally. And note architects do use the design and workshop methods with developers, but at an early point in the process, where neither the Office of Planning nor other interested parties have access.)

And even the lawyers that a company like Abdo hires, the firm name keeps changing, are different than the ones from H&K -- I call Allison Prince the "velvet fist" because she knows how to present and to come across to the community but still gets everything that the developer wants, while the H&K people play hardball all the time, try to deny party status when the law favors it, try to manipulate toady neighborhood groups with which they have worked before to weigh in favorably on the project, use every law and interpretation that they can to quash input, etc.

For example, I am willing to bet that H&K suggested to Trammel Crow and other developers to use the process of "building alteration permits" to tear off the facades of potentially historic buildings, in order to head off the possibility of a group filing a historic designation application, which would delay a project. This is a raze, and requires a formal process, not an alteration and a major misuse of the building permit process. I will never be able to prove it, but this is the kind of thinking that H&K is known for...

Now, the office of planning. The Development Review division is required to analyze projects and submit reports to the Zoning Commission and the BZA. (Note that the DDOT transportation planning division isn't as direct a part of the proceedings, another criticism that I have made before, which hasn't been fully addressed, but is changing.)

DR has lots of meetings with developers on a project and except in rare circumstances, community representatives are never involved. Even if you may schedule meetings separately with the people in DR assigned to the project, you're not typically going to engage with the developer directly. (This isn't just a problem wrt design and context. It's also a problem wrt "community benefits" negotiations.)

Sometimes DR generates great reports. I still remember fondly the report in 2001 by David McGettigan which said that a gas station was definitely not a preferred use on the 300 block of H Street NE, and this empowered our position immeasurably --and yes I guess this is a project that I opposed from the get go, now that I think about it. But what are you supposed to do, when for all intents and purposes, a project is really really terrible and shouldn't be allowed to proceed despite the fact that we are in a capitalist society, and property rights are primary? (added)

Sometimes I get incredibly frustrated with DR. For example, I don't think many of the people in the division are adequately knowledgeable about urban design (such as laid out in the Urban Design Element of the DC Comprehensive Land Use Plan), even though the Historic Preservation Office is also located within the DR division.

The urban design function of the Office of Planning is in another division.

Without the Office of Planning weighing in more firmly on these considerations, it becomes extremely difficult for lay citizens to significantly influence the process -- except if other organizations weigh in, such as the Historic Preservation Review Board and local historic societies, if the new construction project happens to be located within a historic district.

(In fact, the recent conference in the city, sponsored by the Historic Districts Coalition, which I was unable to attend, on modern design in historic districts came about because of the difficulties of dealing with the architects and developers of a proposed building at the south side 600 block of H Street NE--the building is supposed to be built between two extant office buildings and knit the three buildings together (added). We had an involved process, but I don't think we achieved very much. This "event" has also shaped my more rigorous delineation of "community benefits" and how to include the design of a building within that process.)

More and more and more I think urban design -- aspects of "place" and context [and note the first sentence above in the header from this blog, "A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic," comes from Getting to Smart Growth II (added)] -- is the most important of all the elements of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan and should be the guiding element, the lens within which land use decisions are made and projects interpreted, and therefore should guide how development projects are considered.

You can't do that if people in the DR division don't know much about urban design... So it is crucial that people working in the DR division of the Office of Planning be foremost experts in urban design.

But what if the Deputy Mayor's Office (Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development) specifically orders the Office of Planning to lay off, to go easy on a project, to not question, etc.? Or a City Councilmember? Or the developer gets a Councilmember to pass special laws, such as for tax abatements.

And tax abatement decisions should be considered within the Zoning process as they are linked. But tax abatements are not considered as part of a comprehensive review of a project by the Zoning Commission and Office of Planning.

That happens. Not all the time. But enough to have to worry about it. It continues to happen with the Florida Market for example.

Then the process is dirty.

So in "conclusion," there are so many problem points within the process of development review, whether at the community/citizen level, the ANC level, the Office of Planning level, the Zoning level, the Deputy Mayor level, the City Council level, without even considering the three levels of the developer, the architects, and the lawyers representing the developer.

In any case it's clear that:

1. A better process needs to be developed.

2. Design and urban design considerations need to be formalized within the process.

3. There needs to be a "workshop" phase created as part of a new process, providing a way for developers, architects, planners, civic groups, ANCs, and other interested citizens to "hash things out."

4. Multiple training opportunities and information resources and tools need to be made available to ANCs/civic organizations so that they can be far more knowledgeable and deliberative in the process.

Alternatively, I have suggested a few times in the past, although this would make the process even more formal and legalistic, which I don't necessarily agree with, that the "Public Service Commission" model could be adopted for these matters, and just like there is an "Office of the People's Counsel" which represents "the citizens" before a Public Service Commission considering rate increases on the part of utility companies, citizens should be given "counsel" or advocates to represent their interests before the Zoning Commission and the Board of Zoning Appeals.

That is what the Office of Planning role is, in part, representing "the city's interest," but somehow, broader issues are still missed, and so too are neighborhood issues.

The citizens (often) aren't (adequately) represented, even if (certain) city interests are.

And after all that, this still doesn't address the issues of what I call "neighborhood parochialism" versus broader concerns about maintaining and extending qualities of the city's livability. That includes adding more population to make local retail, transit, and public safety more successful, not to mention the increases in property, income, and sales tax revenues.

... Which was listed above as one of the "dialectics" within the process, concerning whether citizens are even willing to consider development.
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And just think, this is for projects where interested parties in a community are willing and want to work with a developer and relevant city agencies, to ensure the best possible project.

It's even harder, when interested neighborhood parties are intransigent.