Amazon Wants to Use Portion of Park for HQ2 Construction

Amazon’s development arm wants to use a portion of the Pentagon City park next to its future HQ2 for construction of the new, permanent office campus.

Seattle-based Acorn Development is asking the Arlington County Board tonight for permission to use a sizable portion of Metropolitan Park — a patch of open space one block from Costco, used primarily by nearby apartment residents — as a staging ground for construction equipment.

“The proposed License Agreement between Acorn and the County will permit Acorn to use the County Easement Area for temporary off-site staging, parking and office trailers in conjunction with the construction,” a county staff report says. The company “will pay the County a License Fee of $10,000.00 per month… during the time the Use Permit is in effect.”

A number of trees are expected to be removed from the park as part of the project, for which Acorn will pay the county at least “$2,400 for every tree it destroys during the process,” according to the Washington Business Journal.

“Arlington would typically expect Amazon to replace each tree taken down at the park… during the staging process,” the Business Journal reported. “But since the trees likely can’t be replanted on site, Amazon would need to pay into the County’s Tree Canopy Fund — money used to maintain the county’s 755,000-tree stock.”

As it builds the 2.1 million square foot office-and-retail development along S. Eads Street, Amazon will also renovate Metropolitan Park, with the help of James Corner Field Operations, the noted designer of New York City’s High Line.

At its Saturday meeting, the County Board took up another Amazon proposal: to use the nearby PenPlace site, which eventually will be home to the second phase of the company’s permanent HQ2, as a temporary concrete batching plant.