Common ground remains elusive in the proposal to redevelop the Melwood site near Crystal City.
At a Nov. 18 meeting, representatives for Melwood and Wesley Housing said they had come up with changes to reduce impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. The revisions also pay homage to the current building, which began life in 1923 as Nelly Custis Elementary School.
“We have gone through a lot of massing manipulations,” said Douglas Carter of DCS Design, the architect, “taking a lot of measures to reduce the visual impact of the building. It feels more like a group of residential buildings.”
Among the changes: different exterior colors, a height reduction and “a lot of detail” to tie the new building to the architecture of the one it will replace, Carter said.
Some residents, however, remain unsatisfied.
“The project is too big,” said Stacy Meyer, who represents the Aurora Highlands Civic Association on the county’s Site Plan Review Committee (SPRC) considering the proposal.
The 1.89-acre project site is located in Aurora Highlands, just west of Crystal City’s restaurant row.
The SPRC meeting on the project is one of two slated to take place before decision-making on the application moves to the Planning Commission and Arlington County Board early next year.
Currently, Melwood uses the site to provide services for and employment opportunities to its clients with disabilities. Partnering with Wesley Housing, it aims to convert the site at 750 23rd Street S. into a five-story, mixed-use project that incorporates an affordable-housing component of 105 units with a day program for clients and workforce-development training.
County Board members in May formally accepted a change in the General Land Use Plan. It was a key step paving the way for redevelopment of the site.
Based on its past use as a school, the parcel is zoned as “public use” — one of the rare cases of that zoning for private property in the county.
The Melwood/Wesley application calls for levels of density that critics say is comparable to what might be found in Pentagon City or Ballston, not the surrounding neighborhood.
“This land use and density is completely inappropriate for the neighborhood,” Meyer said.
But others on the SPRC panel were decidedly more supportive.
Noting that it is less than a 20-minute walk to the nearest Metro station, Kellen MacBeth said that increasing the density “makes a lot of sense” given the location.
Affordable housing is “desperately needed,” said MacBeth, who chairs the county government’s Housing Commission.
Pamela Van Hine, who serves on the panel, said she found it “wonderful” that the proposed project would provide affordable housing and that featured all units with accessibility components.
“That is such a rare combination,” she said.
Tina Muise, who spoke at a public hearing at the meeting, also was supportive. She said the building would not be out of place in its surroundings.
“The highest point of the proposed development is not much higher than the buildings on the opposite side of 23rd Street,” Muise said.
She praised the development team for working to minimize noise and traffic and preserve views from street level of the 0.8-acre Nelly Custis Park that fronts 24th Street S., adjacent to the Melwood parcel.
Meyer, whose civic association has floated its own alternative for downscaled development on the site, suggested county leaders already have made up their minds to support redevelopment of the parcel.
“The reality is, the county is not listening,” she said. “They have decided that the principles of good planning don’t matter, and that resident concerns also do not matter. The design as rendered here is the product of not listening.”
Cathy Puskar, a land-use attorney representing the development consortium, begged to differ.
“I know we cannot always arrive at consensus with everyone, [but] we do our best to be responsive,” she said.
Earlier this year, a local resident nominated the site for local-historic-district status, which if granted could slow redevelopment or force a design compromise that might save some of the existing building.
Members of the county’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) agreed to add the parcel to a list of those to be studied by county historic-preservation staff.
“I get a sense this is really on a fast track,” HALRB member Richard Woodruff said at that body’s meeting last week.
Historic-preservation issues are likely to take a back seat in the minds of county leaders rendering a decision on this site, he suggested.
“There’s a lot of support for affordable housing and housing for people with disabilities,” Woodruff said.
