Call Your Mother Only Just Now Officially Approved

Yesterday I used the saga of Call Your Mother to explore the capabilities of AI to do my job for me. But I didn’t mention that the Call Your Mother saga just took a significant step forward last week. Specifically, the Board of Zoning Adjustment only just finally issued its order approving the zoning relief sought by the store.

As you may or may not recall, this saga began way back in 2019. The store announced it was coming to 35th and O St. and sought the relief it thought it needed to operate at this location. The Board voted in their favor in January 2020, but it took another six months before the actual zoning order effectuating that decision was issued. The store then took several more months to finally open that August.

As explained in my long piece last year, after the store finally opened some neighbors appealed the zoning order to the DC Court of Appeals. The court partially agreed with some of their arguments and it was sent back to the BZA last year. We went through months more of marathon hearings and then last November the BZA voted once again to approve the store’s zoning request.

But it didn’t issue the order effectuating that decision right away. And it continued to not issue the order for months and months. It took about ten months after the BZA’s vote for the board to issue the written order. (Since the initial zoning relief from 2020 was vacated by the court, theoretically the shop could have been forced to close until it was actually granted the relief order, but early on the city decided to allow the store to stay open pending it’s renewed application. This may be a routine accommodation, I really don’t know to be honest.)

There are at least two significant consequences to this order finally being issued. The first is that the decision of the board was to limit the zoning relief to ten years. But it’s not ten years from the date of the BZA’s vote. It’s ten years from the date of the order. So the store got almost a whole extra year of relief.

Secondly, the neighbors objecting to the store have had to wait for the order to be actually issued before they can be permitted to appeal it again. During the hearings, they made it clear that they intended to do so and expressed confidence that they would win again. I don’t know for certain that they will follow through (no case shows up on the docket yet), and I definitely have no idea how the court will decide it. (I’ll merely point out that the store altered its second application to address the reasons that the court gave for its initial decision, so it’s not simply a case of having the same exact issues and facts presented to the court all over again.)

So the saga goes on…

Also, the delay in issuing the order is not unusual, I’m sorry to report. There is a major backlog in the Office of Zoning for the issuance of the written orders these days. A 9 month to one year-delay is pretty typical. While written orders are not necessary for all BZA decisions, they are required for any case involving party opposition. And unlike the Call Your Mother situation, most applicants can’t just go ahead after a favorable BZA vote. They need to wait for the order. This sometimes can color negotiations between applicants and neighbors. If the neighbors agree not to oppose, the project may get completed up to a year earlier. Conversely, applicants are sometimes in situations whereby they can trim back their plans (and perhaps not in the ways asked for by the neighbors) and then the whole project becomes by-right with no zoning relief needed at all.

The Office of Zoning is supposedly trying to bring that time lag down, but clearly they still have their work cut out for them.