Arlington County Board members on Saturday (Nov. 16) approved changes aimed at a speedier bureaucratic and administrative process for those converting office buildings for residential use.
“The name of the game is maintaining agility,” Board member Maureen Coffey said in advance of the 5-0 vote.
The staff-proposed changes, Board member Takis Karantonis said, represent “a very big step forward — a very targeted opportunity” to address aging office buildings that could “adapt to a changing labor market” by becoming residential or live-work units.
Board chair Libby Garvey, who has served more than 12 years on the dais, said policy changes such as this represent a sea-change from the era when she first arrived.
Back then, there at times was a more confrontational relationship between developers on one side and county leaders (Board members and commissions) on the other, she suggested.
“It is feeling so much more collaborative,” Garvey said. “The personalities have changed, the culture has changed.”
It was Covid and the rise of remote work that has produced high office vacancy rates in Arlington and throughout the region and the country.
“Survival of the fittest really kind of applies” among commercial properties in this new era, Garvey said.
