On Wednesday, Nov. 4, the board of the McLean Citizens Association approved three projects proposed for the McLean area.

Vinson Hall Retirement Community agreed to downsize and alter its proposed expansion, although the facility already had approval to build more units than it had been asking for. The expansion has been debated since the facility filed last year for a plan amendment that would allow it to expand from its current 169 independent living units to 350 units over several years. Currently, up to 276 independent living units are allowed on the site, along with the facility’s 49 assisted living units and 21 nursing beds.

THE CITIZENS ASSOCIATION disapproved of that request, and Vinson Hall returned to the group last summer with plans to expand by 100 units, as well as a commons building, executive offices and a parking garage. But neighbors were concerned that the new, five-story independent living building would be visible from Kirby Road, so the retirement community recently met with neighbors to work out a compromise.

"They scaled it back a bit," said McLean Citizens Association (MCA) President Rob Jackson, noting that the number of new independent living units being proposed was cut down from 100 to 88 and the additional floor space from 254,000 square feet to about 234,000. The building will also step down from five stories to four and then three as it nears Kirby Road, and its height is to be brought down by burying the parking garage beneath it another 6 feet, Jackson said.

He said the neighbors had expressed mixed feelings, understanding that the facility was within its rights to expand but not sure whether they would like the result. "It’s going to make a huge change in that neighborhood," he said. "It’s going to be an awful lot bigger."

Jackson said Vinson Hall had also agreed that any future additional units would be built within the confines of the most recently proposed floor space. "I think what we’re trying to do is have an agreement, ‘Let’s just agree that this is as big as it gets,’" he said.

The Fairfax County Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing on the expansion on Wednesday, Nov. 18.

The MCA also approved an organic food market, called Nourish Market, to be located in a 1,800 square-foot space in the strip mall on Old Dominion Road just south of Spring Hill Road. "They could do it by right if there were one more shop [in the center], so it seems kind of silly not to let them go ahead with it," Jackson said. He said the citizens association had looked into traffic patterns before approving the project, and the neighboring homeowners associations had supported the application.

A public hearing on the Nourish Market application will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 2.

THE PERSONAL STORAGE facility that the MCA’s Planning and Zoning Committee had supported the week before was also approved at last Wednesday’s meeting. The building, to be located on what is now a parking lot across Beverly Road from the Ashby Apartments and McLean House condominiums, is to contain almost 60,000 square feet of floor space in four stories, while resembling a three-story office building from the outside.

Jackson said the board’s vote to approve the project was divided, but overall, he said, "I think the feeling is that it’s less traffic-intense than some other uses the landowners could have done."

The Planning Commission will also conduct a public hearing on the storage facility on Dec. 2.