by Anna C.
In the morning of June 7, a momentous event, for the history of St. Mary's, took place in a public hearing in the auditorium of the government building of Fairfax County. After over a year of development and back-and-forth conversations and negotiations between our architectural team and the county, the Department of Planning and Zoning granted St. Mary a special permit, allowing the expansion and improvement of a religious facility in a residential neighborhood.
This permit is the most critical foundation for building a new fellowship hall, incorporating handicap access on all levels of our building, and modernizing our infrastructure. Without it, we could not expand any part of the building. Unless the congregation decreased significantly, we would soon have to buy or build a new property to meet the needs of the current congregation and future generations.
Obtaining this permit is a triumph for the church and the many people who worked tirelessly to achieve it. The application submitted is the size of a thick book. Our architect and civil engineer had to revise and resubmit several versions of this book to comply with a great number of staff requests and find solutions to their objections.
To accommodate all the county requirements for a special permit within the limitations of a small, residential lot is extremely difficult. It required resourcefulness in finding solutions, compromises, a long series of negotiations, and many levels of redesign. Requirements included ample documentation, compliance with public right of way, location of existing and proposed parking spaces, maintaining the minimum distance from the nearest property line(s), the number of required and provided parking spaces; location and width of all existing utility easements and the preliminary location(s) of new or relocated utilities, a stormwater management plan, a plan showing existing vegetation, including the limits of clearing and vegetation to be preserved, and proposed landscaping and screening in accordance with the provisions of Section 5108, an estimate of traffic impact of the proposed use, and many others.
We are grateful to Maria and Sri for their hard work, skill, patience, flexibility and ingenuity.
With this crucial step out of the way, we are now ready to develop construction documents, get bids from contractors and apply for a building permit.
