From: onejollybird <onejollybird@yahoo.com>

Saturday, October 20, 9 am, Lisner Home, 5425 Western Avenue, NW

ANC 3E will convene a special meeting to discuss and possibly vote on
the Public Space Permit Application for driveways and curb-cuts for
the Commerce Bank on Wisconsin Avenue. We have invited and are
expecting a DDOT engineer to attend so the community can get our
technical traffic questions answered.

As you may know, we have requested an engineer be available at our two
previous meetings but thus far, DDOT has not permitted one to be
present. ANC 3E is working with Councilmember Cheh to arrange for a
member of DDOT's engineering team to be at our meeting on Saturday.

The traffic engineers who first reviewed the plans recommended that
the the request to develop this site as a drive-through bank be denied
for various reasons such as compromising the existing service and
emergency uses of the alleyway, the impact of adding several hundred
vehicles into the small site affecting refuse collection, residential
access and most seriously, emergency vehicle access.

DDOT issued a statment that "although the proposed use of the public
alleyway for patron access could have some impact to the public access
with elevated levels of daily traffic that may create some difficulty
to the service and emergency vehicle access within the alley, and
queuing into the alleyway, we have no objection to this application."

As the attorney for Commerce Bank and DDOT's Ken Laden acknowledged at
our last meeting, there have been changes to the site plans which were
originally submitted to DCRA and upon which the building permits were
approved and issued in August. We have asked the Commerce bank
attorney and DDOT for a copy of the most recent plans (7th DDOT
submission)to be delivered to the ANC prior to the meeting as well as
a copy be delivered to DCRA for a re-review by the Office of Zoning to
ensure compliance with zoning regulations. This re-review is required
when there are changes made subsequent to the issuance of the building
permit as has occurred in this case.

Amy McVey
Chair, ANC 3E