County Board candidates largely expressed interest in efforts to convert aging office buildings to residential and hotel uses at a recent candidate forum.
“There are huge opportunities,” Board Chair Takis Karantonis said during the Sept. 30 event sponsored by Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future.
The online forum attracted four of the five candidates. Jeramy Olmack did not participate but incumbent Karantonis, Republican challenger Bob Cambridge and independents Audrey Clement and Carlos De Castro “D.C.” Pretelt fielded questions.
Karantonis, who has served in office since 2020, pointed to a July 2025 Board meeting when three office buildings — 2100 and 2200 Crystal Drive and 3601 Wilson Blvd — were approved for residential or hotel use. Approval of those three projects reduced the county’s office-vacancy rate by more than a full percentage point, County Manager Mark Schwartz said after the July actions.
And there is more to come: Other projects are “in the hopper” and by the end of 2025 will account for about 900 new apartments and 350 hotel rooms, Karantonis said.
“I am totally on board with that,” said Clement, who may have been first local candidate to promote office-to-residential conversions several years ago.
Clement, a perennial protest candidate, said the biggest impediment is the cost of doing the renovation, which potentially could exceed costs of razing existing buildings and starting fresh.
“It’s a very expensive proposition, which is why we haven’t seen more,” she said. “Only a few such projects are underway.”
Cambridge, who previously ran for County Board against Karantonis and Susan Cunningham in a 2020 special election, said he supports conversions, but voiced wariness about unintended consequences.
He pointed to the additional services, from schools to public safety, that residential development brings with it.
Going from commercial to residential use “does make a difference [and] I don’t think that has been planned for,” he said.
“I’m not against planning, but I’m definitely against planning blindly,” Cambridge said.
Pretelt, alone among the four in making his first bid for office, seemed to align with Cambridge. He said moving forward on conversions was fine but the county must work at “addressing community concerns while we do so,” he said.
“You cannot ignore the community,” Pretelt said in response to a previous question. “The community doesn’t feel listened to — they feel steamrollered.”
Cambridge said he hoped some of the units coming out of conversions could be available to those of lesser means.
“We need all kinds of folks” in the county, he said.
Karantonis agreed with making housing available at various price points. Currently, he said, “prices are absolutely astronomically high.”
The 90-minute forum zeroed in on issues of interest to Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future: development, zoning and housing. It touched on corridors from Langston Blvd in the north to Columbia Pike in the south.
The five contenders for County Board are competing under ranked-choice rules. If no candidate wins more than 50% of first-choice votes, low-scoring contenders will be eliminated and their votes reallocated as directed by their voters.
