Update: The video of this session is now available. Also, the date in the headline for this post has been corrected.

Update 2: The City has posted an outcomes document for this meeting. Also, there is notice of the closed executive session mentioned below.

Tonight’s Last night’s Council meeting was largely dedicated to two public hearings: The Destruction of the Talbott House and the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. There was also announcement of a closed executive session regarding a lawsuit being brought against the City (I’ll provide a link when the City posts an announcement on their website) and a statement from John Schlichting that, as a result of a financial interest in the Festival at Muddy Branch shopping center (the location for the proposed day labor center), he will not be participating in the special Council meeting this coming Thursday.

Clarification: Mr. Schlichting’s financial interest is in a company — JBG Properties — that is 50% owner of the leasing and managment company for the shopping center, JBG Rosenfeld.

The Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) portion of the meeting, which was a joint hearing with the Planning Commission, took around 45 minutes. Two major points of concern were (a) whether it was a good idea to have an APFO that was substantially stricter than the APFO of the surrounding and adjacent jurisdictions (the beer that Mr. Schlichting bought for Mr. Ossont a few days ago was not sufficient to convince the Planning & Code Director to go on the record with his opinion on this question) and (b) whether the APFO should be sensitive to the six-year planning horizon used by MPCS for school construction, or whether it should, as drafted, be sensitive to the two-year funding horizon used by the County for such capital improvements. The County’s APFO uses the six-year standard, while Rockville’s uses a two-year standard. Apparently one MCPS official told Assistant City Manager Fred Felton that they would prefer that Gaithersburg use the six-year standard, but MCPS has not provided any written documentation which identifies the reasons for this preference or even just states this an official position of the school system. Several speakers expressed skepticism regarding the six-year standard, especially given MCPS’ horrendous track record for funding new school construction; it is not uncommon for projects to languish for a decade or more in the unfunded years-three-to-six portion of the planning horizon. As this was just a public hearing, there were no conclusions at this point.

The HDC hearing on the Hair Bar also took close to an hour. Mr. Halici’s lawyers and his appraiser presented a long — and to my ear whiney — case for why the demolition should be allowed. Mr. Halici’s team still did not provide any documentation to demonstrate the claimed financial hardship, I expect because there simply isn’t any. Instead, they talked about the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to bring the building up to code, and that it would cost (IIRC) around a quarter of a million dollars to rehabilitate it to the point that the second floor could be used. While I expect they thought that these numbers sounded impressively large, I thought that they sounded like perfectly reasonable, routine and maybe even low costs for a commercial redevelopment project. Admittedly, I base this not on experience in commercial construction but rather on some familiarity with costs for residential projects, ranging from painting and roofing to garages and additions, and a general sense that construction on a commercial project is likely to cost more than the equivalent for residential work. Costs being what they are, it would seem to me not to be unusual for even a homeowner to spend as much as $100,000 to update a century-old home after living in it for nearly twenty years. Also, since this property is a designated historic asset, Mr. Halici is able to take advantage of various tax credits that will offset much of the this cost; as this is a commercial property, he is able to get these credits for more types of work than can the owner of a historic residential property.

During the hearing, several speakers rose to speak against the demolition. The CouHistoric District Commission voted, after much back and forth with Mr. Halici’s lawyers, to hold the record open for thirty days. Mr. Halici’s lawyer preferred that they hold the record open for at most ten days. He also made the outrageous request that he be allowed to respond to all public comment even if it arrives at the very end of the comment period — in effect, that he be allowed to have the last word — this would require that the record be reopened for Mr. Halici and Mr. Halici only. The HDC made it quite clear that this was not how the process worked.

Mr Halici was seen, after the meeting, talking at length to Gazette reporter Jaime Ciavarra. It will be interesting to see how the Gazette will spin this.