Efforts to expedite the conversion of outdated Arlington office buildings to residential uses have moved another procedural step forward.
Planning Commission members voted 8-0 Monday (Nov. 4) to recommend County Board approval of a number of staff proposals aimed at culling aging, often empty, commercial building stock, replacing it with apartments or condominiums.
“I applaud adaptive reuse,” commission chair Sara Steinberger said as the body forwarded the matter to what likely will be final approval later this month.
County Board members will be asked to make amendments to the zoning ordinance aimed a streamlining the process for property owners wishing to redevelop existing commercial buildings for residential use. Many of those buildings already were in trouble before Covid, and now many sit mostly or completely empty.
“We have an aging presence of older, obsolete or soon to be obsolete commercial buildings — they’re not going to transform by themselves,” said Mark McCauley, director of real-estate development with Arlington Economic Development, an agency of the county government.
Streamlining the process to help property owners reuse those buildings for housing will “grow that weakness into a strength,” McCauley told Planning Commission members.
“There’s a sense of urgency. We are moving quickly,” McCauley said of what county officials call their Commercial Market Resiliency Initiative.
The effort has won support of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce.
John Musso, the business group’s government-affairs manager, told Commission members that office-vacancy rates countywide now stand at 23.7%, with the hardest hit sector being older buildings that do not offer amenities tenants want.
Having those buildings stand empty and forlorn has “tremendous downstream effects” on surrounding neighborhoods and the county government’s tax base, Musso said.
He was the only person to testify on the proposal during the Nov. 4 discussion.
While office-to-residential-conversion effort could prove a win-win for both housing and economic development, there is a limit to how many buildings might be viable contenders, county staff acknowledge. And, as with every decision in life, “there are tradeoffs,” McCauley said.
Planning Commission member Leonardo Sarli warmed to the idea of that body creating the equivalent of a “SWAT team” — a few members who would would meet with county staff and potentially property owners on individual projects, to make sure the streamlined approval process didn’t result in any negatives for the surrounding community.
Doing so would allow the planning body to have input while not throwing hurdles or the possibility of lengthy delays in the way of property owners, which could lead them to abandon efforts.
Adaptive-reuse strategies have been the norm for a decade in a number of communities, including neighboring D.C. In the Skyline area of Fairfax County, older high-rise offices have been converted into live-work spaces.
While once dubious about the concept, Arlington leaders now seem to have embraced it wholeheartedly as a possible option.
A study conducted for the Fairfax County government determined that office-to-residential conversions could be a net plus for tax coffers. But while revenue from a fully occupied residential building would be more than from a half-empty or empty commercial building, there also would be costs for local governments to absorb.
That could be particularly true if the new housing attracts families with children who will attend public schools. It costs Arlington Public Schools nearly $25,000 for each child in the system, more than the total real-estate tax bill for any Arlington property assessed at less than $2.3 million.
However the process plays out, Commission chair Steinberger said that if the county government wants to promote reuse of buildings as an alternative to a raze-and-rebuild strategy, selling the idea to property owners via outreach efforts is key.
“Get to these people early,” she said.
