Tomorrow (Friday) is the last day to submit feedback on a proposed 370-unit apartment building in Crystal City.
The design is less than half the height recommended in the Crystal City Sector Plan, but developer JBG Smith argues that it would function on a more “human scale.”
The potential building site is located on “Block W” at 2451 Crystal Drive, near Reagan National Airport.
The lot currently contains a small, JBG Smith-owned workout park, playground and seating area, as well as an off-ramp to an access road. A 7-story building overlooking 35-38,000 square feet of open space would replace the off-ramp and part of the existing park, according to a presentation by the developer.
JBG Smith plans to keep the volleyball courts and might relocate other current park features.
The new development would prioritize 2-bedroom units. The project would come with a green roof as well as a courtyard that residents could access. An area adjacent to the park would be dedicated to retail space.
“While not a high-rise or tower composition, the 7-story design works well within the overall framework of providing human scale in a comfortable, pedestrian environment,” JBG Smith development analyst Karolina Pazdrazdis said.
County staff noted concerns about how the new development proposes to reroute an existing service road in a way that would limit access to the adjacent park. The building is also much shorter than the sector plan recommends.
“The applicant has chosen to envision a building that is 85 feet in height, which is well under the 200-foot building height envisioned by the sector plan,”county planner Krissy Walentisch said.
This proposed building deviates from county guidance in other ways. Walentisch said there is a significant overhang — exceeding sector plan recommendations — between the building’s “tower,” composed of floors 3-7, and the building’s “podium,” or ground floor and first floor.
The county feedback form asks residents to provide feedback on the building placement and design, as well as its impact on the current park.
Following community feedback, a Site Plan Review Committee is scheduled to hold its first meeting on the development proposal next month. After this committee meets twice, the development will go to the Planning Commission and Arlington County Board, though dates for this have yet to be set.
Meantime, other JBG Smith projects in Crystal City are also moving forward.
This week, the developer announced that the final beam had been placed atop two residential towers at 2000 and 2001 S. Bell Street, formerly Crystal Plaza. Both the 25-story West and 19-story East towers are slated for completion in the spring of 2025.
Late last month, JBG Smith also filed a new conceptual site plan proposing to redevelop a Crystal City office building. Application materials depict a 15-story office building divided into three sections, slightly off-centered from each other, at 1800 S. Bell Street.
About a year of construction remains for two apartment towers replacing a Crystal City office building.
The final beam was placed atop the two residential towers at 2000 and 2001 S. Bell Street, formerly Crystal Plaza One, this week. Developer JBG Smith and its project manager, Balfour Beatty, announced the “topping out” construction milestone on Monday.
“Congratulations to the team for accomplishing this major achievement,” said Dan Novack, Balfour Beatty’s president for the Mid-Atlantic region, in a press release. “We look forward to continued progress and ongoing collaboration with our owner, industry partners and the local community in providing a premier living development for future residents in the evolving National Landing area.”
Both the 25-story West and 19-story East towers are slated for completion in the spring of 2025 and will offer a combined 775 units with a variety of floor plan options, per the release. The towers will have more than 22,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space as well as rooftop decks and pools.
In terms of public benefits, JBG Smith will add a public park space next to the East tower. It will also build an extension of S. Bell Street, connecting to S. Clark Street, with bike lanes, as well as a new alley south of the East tower.
The development is a stone’s throw from the revamped Central District Retail shopping plaza, or “Crystal Square,” home to taqueria Tacombi, bakery Mah-Ze-Dahr and other shops. It will be near a forthcoming second entrance to the Crystal City Metro station, a planned Virginia Railway Express station, now expected to wrap up in 2026, and pedestrian bridge linking Crystal City to National Airport.
The county approved the project in May 2021 after holding a public hearing. Demolition work began shortly after and JBG Smith broke ground about a year later, in January 2022.
Under the revised site plan, JBG Smith said it would contribute $3.36 million towards the county’s Affordable Housing Investment Fund and $137,495 toward a utility undergrounding fund, as well as $75,000 for a public art installation, according to a 2021 presentation from the developer.
Developer JBG Smith filed a new conceptual site plan late last month proposing to redevelop a Crystal City office building.
The building, located at 1800 S. Bell Street, was leased by Amazon until its lease expired in 2023.
Ahead of Amazon’s planned departure, JBG Smith signaled its plans to “take off-line and entitle [the property] for alternate uses,” per a quarterly investor package from last summer. Amazon has another lease at 2100 Crystal Drive set to expire this year.
Now, the developer is in the early stages of advancing plans for what to do with 1800 S. Bell Street, which is directly north of the Crystal City Marriott hotel and across the street from the Crystal City Metro station.
The tower could get the redevelopment treatment as early as 2026, per JBG Smith’s report.
Application materials depict a 15-story office building divided into three sections, slightly off-centered from each other, with an “architectural feature corner” recommended in the Crystal City Sector Plan.
The sector plan identifies the west border for street improvements and the northeast corner for intersection improvements. It recommends a maximum height of 300 feet.
A floor plan map shows the ground floor will have a bike room, lockers, an “amenity/service” space and two retail spaces along S. Bell Street.
The plans also show “interim conditions” near Route 1. The Virginia Dept. of Transportation proposes to lower elevated portions of the road through Crystal City to grade, turning it into a lower-speed “urban boulevard.”
The transportation agency is also mulling at least one pedestrian bridge or tunnel at 18th Street S., near the Metro station, to improve safety. VDOT’s study of Route 1 is still in its second phase, which is set to wrap up by this summer.
JBG Smith filed the conceptual site plan to get county feedback on right-of-way design, “including interim and permanent conditions relative to Route 1 street improvements,” and project timing, “relative to ongoing right-of-way improvements and coordination with VDOT,” as well as site layout, according to its application.
The county offers the conceptual site plan option to “provide guidance to prospective applicants in the preparation of land use development applications through the preliminary identification of major policy, Zoning Ordinance, County Code, and/or process related issues.”
The facade of the new 36-story Hilton in Rosslyn is nearing completion but it could be nearly two years before the hotel welcomes its first guests.
Meanwhile, the project’s residential counterpart, Rosslyn Towers, is close to being done, with new tenants expected to move in within a few months, the developer tells ARLnow.
“We are excited to open Rosslyn Towers at The Key this spring,” said Greg Raines, a spokesperson for Dittmar Company, the developer of The Key.
While there is no firm data yet, Raines said the plan is to start leasing the 500+ apartments in the Rosslyn Towers building, at 1900 N. Fort Myer Drive, by April 1.
Dittmar’s goal for the 331-room hotel is to hold a grand opening sometime in the last three months of 2025, says Raines.
“We are excited to deliver both properties as we believe both are best in class and are exciting additions to Rosslyn, Arlington, and the surrounding [D.C.] area,” he said.
In September 2019, the Arlington County Board approved plans redevelop the 18-story, 50-year-old Rosslyn Holiday Inn with a residential tower of up to 25 stories and a hotel with up to 38 stories, with 37,000-foot conference center and 14,000 square feet of retail. The former hotel came down in a well-documented controlled implosion.
In 2021, the Arlington County Board approved a site plan amendment to adjust the hotel’s square footage to accommodate more parking and conference space, and increase the number of residential units from 523 to 536.
Dittmar said it would provide a cash contribution of $215,000 to the Affordable Housing Investment Fund to offset the requested additional density, per a 2021 county report.
One year later, Hilton announced it had signed an agreement to run the high-rise hotel.
While the residential tower looks finished, construction crews were still putting final touches on the exterior of the hotel when ARLnow visited the site yesterday (Tuesday). Last month, the company submitted applications for elevator and fire inspection permits, according to county records.
Dittmar also plans to share details regarding a new “destination restaurant” below the residential tower in the coming weeks, says Raines.
Arlington’s Board of Zoning Appeals has rejected a neighbor’s attempt to stop two proposed Expanded Housing Option developments in the Alcova Heights neighborhood.
An affiliate of local homebuilder Classic Cottages proposes building two side-by-side six-plexes at 4015 and 4019 7th Street S., bordering Alcova Heights Park and a couple of blocks north of Columbia Pike.
A neighbor fought back, filing an appeal with the BZA, which takes up appeals to any decisions or determinations made by the county’s Zoning Administrator.
Normally, residents go to the BZA to appeal decisions related to plans to build additions or add front porches; this appears to be one of the first appeals related to new Missing Middle developments.
In February 2023, before the Missing Middle ordinances were approved, Classic Cottages submitted a request to re-subdivide two properties in a “pipestem” configuration, where the boundaries of one property form a “pipe” around the other. After the Missing Middle or Expanded Housing Option (EHO) ordinances went into effect in July, Classic Cottages submitted permits to replace the current single-family home and circular driveway spread across the two lots with a pair of 6-plexes.
“Pipestem” lots are a rarity now because many years ago, they were so hated by the community that the Zoning Ordinance Review Committee got the county zoning ordinance amended to make pipe-stem developments more difficult, says Barnes Lawson, the attorney for Classic Cottages.
“The reason is that you had problems with driveways. You had houses behind houses. It was just not the ideal way in which to provide housing for our community,” he said.
In her appeal, neighbor Kelley Reed argued that the permits were illegally issued. She contends the lots, created via subdivision, did not yet exist in county land records when the permits were issued. Also, she said, they do not conform with the 60-feet minimum width required for EHO developments and the EHOs would have to be put on portions of the lot that cannot be built on.
“This is not a pro- or anti-EHO case,” said Reed. “This case has ramifications far beyond EHO and regardless of use, as this case is about getting the math right. It’s about following the rules. It’s about not cherry-picking definitions. Please correct the staffs’ errors and reject the wrongly approved permits.”
Several neighbors joined the chorus, dwelling less on the math and more on how the project does not fit with the surrounding houses and would hurt the neighborhood.
Jamshid Kooros, who identified himself as a Missing Middle supporter, argued that building multifamily buildings on narrow, deep lots would make this project “the poster child of those who oppose the changes.” That has already come to pass, however, as the project figured into a recent presentation by Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future, a local group that has argued against the policy changes.
Others, including the president of Classic Cottages, came to its defense, arguing that residents are hijacking the purpose of BZA appeals to relitigate Missing Middle.
“In all the years we’ve been doing this — building houses all over the county — it never occurred to me that adjacent property owners could file BZA cases against one of our projects. It’s never happened before,” David Tracy, the president of Classic Cottages said. “This particular case seems to be more about the EHO policy itself and I would respectfully ask that, to the extent that it is the policy that’s being challenged, that there’s a proper venue — a larger court case that’s being handled right now.”
The Macy’s store in Ballston is slated to close this spring, as soon as March, ARLnow has learned.
The department store at the Ballston Quarter mall was one of five locations the company identified last week as set to close in 2024. Macy’s is also planning to cut some 2,350 jobs this year.
Signs are now up outside and inside the store, advertising a storewide 30% off sales. All sales are final as of Monday, Jan. 22, according to the signage.
A Macy’s spokesperson tells ARLnow that the clearance sale “will run for approximately 8-12 weeks.” The store is expected to close after that.
The Arlington County Board approved a redevelopment plan for the Macy’s site in December 2022. The plan calls for a 16-story, 555-unit apartment complex atop a grocery store and another 1,400-square-foot retail space.
The Macy’s store at Ballston Quarter will close later this year, the company announced Thursday.
The Ballston location is one of five Macy’s stores set to close in 2024, as the department store chain aims to cut 2,350 jobs, or 3.5% of its workforce, including 13% of corporate staff.
The closure of the Ballston Macy’s is not exactly a surprise. The Arlington County Board approved a redevelopment plan for the site in December 2022. From our previous reporting:
Insight Property Group proposes to demolish the longtime department store and vacant office building at 685 N. Glebe Road and replace it with a 16-story, 555-unit apartment complex atop a grocery store. In response to online engagement, it is adding a second, 1,400-square-foot retail space on the ground floor.
The units would be spread across two 14-story towers joined at the penthouse level. Residents would have 250 underground parking spaces while grocery store patrons would have 148 spots on the building’s second story.
There’s no immediate word of an updated timeline for the development, which was the subject of scrutiny from local residents and transportation planners.
Photo (top) via Google Maps
(Updated at 3:55 p.m.) One of Rosslyn’s few remaining skywalks is set to come down as part of an effort to realize a walkable corridor from one end of the neighborhood to the other.
Arlington County will be demolishing a skywalk over N. Nash Street, near the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church building and Sunoco gas station dubbed “Our Lady of Exxon.” The county applied for a demolition permit for this project last month, permit records show.
“This is part of the Rosslyn Sector Plan’s 18th Street Corridor,” says Arlington Dept. of Environmental Services spokeswoman Katie O’Brien. “The removal of the skywalk will help refocus pedestrian activity at the street level by replacing the remainder of the skywalk system with the envisioned 18th Street Corridor over time.”
Envisioned in the 2015 Rosslyn Sector Plan, the 18th Street Corridor is envisioned as a walkable thoroughfare extending from Rosslyn’s western edge, N. Quinn Street, to its eastern edge, Arlington Ridge Road. The corridor is intended to make Rosslyn more pedestrian-friendly by removing the skywalks, breaking up long north-south blocks and improving access to the Rosslyn Metro station, per the sector plan.
Some skywalks have already been removed as part of redevelopment projects changing Rosslyn’s skyline. Most recently, one that connected the now-demolished RCA building to the Rosslyn Gateway building was removed as part of plans to replace the building with apartments. Another over N. Lynn Street was removed in 2014 for the Central Place redevelopment that replaced a McDonalds.
The county is still working on the plans and obtaining necessary easements, O’Brien said. Demolition is expected to start this summer and take upwards of two months.
The demolition permit does not apply to the redevelopment project from Arlington-based Snell Properties, approved in 2021, to replace the Ames Center office building, formerly occupied by the Art Institute of Washington with two residential towers on the same block.
One tower would abut the Hyatt Centric hotel and another would surround the church and gas station, which will be completely rebuilt, according to a 2021 press release.
In advance of this project, Arlington Temple United Methodist Church has relocated to 1701 N. Bryan Street, just north of Courthouse, according to Rev. Martha “Marti” Ringenbach.
As for progress on this development, Snell did demolish 1820 Fort Myer Drive in October but a construction start date has not been determined, a spokeswoman for the developer tells ARLnow. She noted Snell was not aware of this demolition permit.
Once underway, the redevelopment will also advance the 18th Street Corridor by building up a segment from Fort Myer Drive to N. Nash Street, the 2021 release said.
In proposing a corridor that is partially inaccessible to cars, the sector plan admits that the 1960s-era skywalks were a bit of a failed experiment.
These skywalks were “designed to connect blocks, buildings and uses efficiently while keeping pedestrians separated from vehicular traffic,” the plan says. “The execution of the skywalk concept fell short of expectations in some cases, which combined with a renewed focus on directing pedestrian activity to the street level, has led to an incremental deconstruction of the system over the past 15 years.”
Rosslyn’s skywalks were declassé even before the new millenium, according to a scathing write-up in a 1999 study of Rosslyn.
“To the planners of the early 50’s and 60’s, presumably it seemed orderly and logical to separate the pedestrian flow with its erratic, unpredictable movements, from the fast-moving steel machines of the road,” a consulting firm wrote in the report. “Buried in the back of the planners’ minds perhaps lingered images of the piazza at San Marco in Venice or those of Rome. If so, in the instance of Rosslyn, something was lost in translation.”
A redevelopment project near Rosslyn is teed up for Arlington County Board approval this weekend.
Reston-based Orr Partners proposes to build an 8-story apartment building with up to 446 units on a 2.2-acre site in the Radnor-Fort Myer Heights neighborhood.
The site at 1501 Arlington Blvd is currently home to the Red Lion Hotel, formerly the Best Western Iwo Jima hotel, which opened in 1958, as well as the Ellis Arms and Williamsburg apartments, which were built in 1954. It is bounded by Fairfax Drive to the south and the Parc Rosslyn Apartments and Belvedere Condominiums to the north.
The proposed building would add 418 net new units while still coming 62 feet under the height maximum allowed in this area, county planner Adam Watson told the Planning Commission last week. Its construction would eliminate surface parking lots and result in underground utility lines, new streetscapes and accessibility improvements.
Orr took over never-realized plans to build a 10-story condo tower and a 12-story hotel on the site, which the County Board approved in 2019.
After going through the county’s public review process, Orr changed the building’s form and design in response to staff and commissioner comments, says Watson. The developer made changes to the building at the corner of N. Pierce Street and Fairfax Drive to improve circulation on the sidewalk below, near a planned bicycle storage room.
It also added visual interest to gates along Fairfax Drive at the pedestrian level, intended to screen transformers from view and made design changes to give the lobby more prominence, he said.
Orr will replace existing market-rate affordable units with 24 on-site committed affordable units set aside for households earning up to 60% of the area median income. The units — seven 1-bedroom, 16 2-bedroom and one 3-bedroom — add up to 42 bedrooms, the same as currently exists.
Members of the Planning Commission urged the developer to consider trading some of the proposed 1-bedroom units for 3-bedroom ones.
“This would be a really great opportunity, as we rarely see 3-bedroom held market-rate affordable units that come before us,” said commission Chair Sara Steinberger last week. “You found one [3-bedroom unit]: I’m asking you guys to see what you can do to find one or two more. I do see some consensus in this body that that’s something that we would appreciate.”
Ryan Orr, the senior vice president of development, said his company is “happy to explore adding more 3-bedrooms in lieu of one or twos,” noting this would require “a holistic look” at the floor plans.
Representatives from the nearby Belvedere Condominiums owners association and the Radnor-Fort Myer Heights Civic Association expressed concern that the project will displace existing tenants of the market-rate affordable units.
Company chairman David Orr said he has heard these concerns from these neighbors since the kickoff of the project review process.
“We took that to heart. My son has met with every resident there — two didn’t open their doors — and we talked to them about their plans,” he said. “Some have had personal issues. Some are delinquent. We are not enforcing the leases and we are working with them in every way to bring them back to community.”
Two new apartment buildings in Crystal City are almost ready for residents to move in.
Construction started on the two residential towers at 1900 Crystal Drive in 2021, nearly one year to the day after JBG Smith received approval to redevelop the aging office building previously there.
Now, JBG Smith tells ARLnow it expects residents can starting moving into the buildings — a 3-minute walk from Amazon’s second headquarters — this February. The developer has already begun receiving partial certificates of occupancy for certain floors of one tower, dubbed “The Grace.”
JBG Smith said it expects to wrap up construction by the third quarter of 2024.
The 583,000-square-foot north tower, The Grace, and a 567,500-square-foot south tower, called “Reva,” are each 300 feet tall and, across them, have 808 rental units and about 40,000 square feet of street-level retail. A pedestrian-friendly street bisecting the towers will connect 18th and 20th Streets S. and a not-yet-built park.
The Crystal City Sector Plan envisions this park space as the largest in Crystal City, at about 74,000 square feet. The plan says it “would allow for a wide variety of uses, such as passive recreation, exhibitions, concerts, festivals, cafes, some temporary kiosk retail, and evening outdoor movies” among other uses, says Dept. of Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Jerry Solomon.
JBG Smith granted to the county a public park easement of approximately 45,000 square feet to establish this open space, dubbed “Center Park.” The county received the easement understanding that the rest of the proposed public space would come as part of a future development, Solomon said.
JBG Smith also contributed $300,000 for the park’s master planning, a community engagement process where people will weigh in on programmed elements and other features.
“The current [Capital Improvement Plan] envisions the design of Center Park to begin in FY 2025 with construction to begin some time in FY 2027,” she said in an email. “In July 2024, the County Board will be considering the FY 2025-2034 CIP which may contain changes to the potential timelines and funding for public space development within the Crystal City corridor.”
While residents of The Grace and Reva can start moving in February, it is looking like a summer opening for at least some of the six announced businesses move into the ground floor retail spaces.
Per window dressings and Arlington County permits, 1900 Crystal Drive will be home to new outposts of Tatte Bakery & Cafe, a the ice cream shop Van Leeuwen, D.C.’s Chinese-French fusion restaurant Bar Chinois and Cuban café and bar Colada Shop, a nail salon called nailsaloon, and New York City-based botox spa Peachy.
Nailsaloon recently opened a location in Chevy Chase and aims to move into Crystal City this summer, a spokeswoman said.
Colada Shop is also targeting a summer opening, a company spokeswoman said.
The other businesses did not respond to requests for more information about when they might open.
JBG Smith says it still has some retail space to fill, so additional announcements may be coming.
From rendering to reality. The 1900 Crystal Drive development is transforming National Landing's skyline with its two standout towers – the Grace and Reva.
🔗 Learn more: https://t.co/vzv0WOcE8i pic.twitter.com/2hcnfrpIyn
— NationalLanding (@NationalLanding) January 3, 2024
New plans have been filed to redevelop two hotels in Green Valley with apartments.
The project would replace Hotel Pentagon — previously a Best Western that saw some prostitution-related run-ins with law enforcement — and the Comfort Inn Pentagon with a 521-unit, 602,000-square-foot apartment complex.
Both hotels are located at the intersection of 24th Road S. and S. Glebe Road, with I-395, the Lomax AME Zion Church, some auto body shops and two apartment complexes all nearby.
The plans were filed by Capital First Investments and Capital Second Investments, which own the parcels at 2480 S. Glebe Road, and CC Rock Arlington Owner LLC, incorporated in Delaware. The Washington Business Journal first reported the filing, attributed to this LLC, last week.
This LLC is tied to a North Carolina-based developer, Crescent Communities, which also invests in real estate and operates mixed-use communities. It has offices in D.C. as well as outposts in several western and southern states. Reached by ARLnow, the company declined to comment.
In filing this new application, the owners and developer have taken the next step forward in the county site plan application process. ARLnow reported this January that preliminary plans had been filed — an optional step some take to discuss the project with and solicit early feedback from county planners.
The number and mix of units has changed since this early filing, which floated a 467-unit apartment complex and 36 stacked townhouses. The apartment building will have 20 additional units, and there will be four four-story buildings with a total of 34 apartments.
The apartment building will include a mix of 1- and 2-bedroom units, some of which will also have dens, and two 3-bedroom units. The plans call for 580 vehicle parking spots and 222 bicycle parking spots — more than the minimum 546 and 219 spots, respectively, required by zoning codes.
The developer also proposes a series of site upgrades, including “enhanced sidewalk and streetscape design, new landscaping, and activation of the ground-floor façades,” a letter accompanying the application says.
“The proposed development will achieve the goals of the Four Mile Run Area Plan by implementing new residential buildings as well as a variety of site improvements in the Four Mile Run neighborhood,” it continues.
The Green Valley Civic Association has had one meeting with the developer and is still trying to schedule a follow-up, association president Portia Clark tells ARLnow.
“We looked at some of their preliminary plans,” she said. “We also wanted them to meet with the church next door, with the cemetery, which will be very close to the development. There were some issues with the naming. They were going to name it Arlington Ridge and we’re not Arlington Ridge — we’re next to it.”
Clark says she would like to see the plans presented to the community at the civic association’s upcoming January meeting.
