Members of a Green Valley church are pitching their battle against a development next door as a David vs. Goliath fight against gentrification.
The project would redevelop two existing hotels — Hotel Pentagon and Comfort Inn Pentagon City — and a surface parking lot at 2480 S. Glebe Road in Green Valley into a mixed townhouse and multifamily development.
The project would add 531 residential units, with 494 units in a multifamily building and 37 in townhouses. It would also include three new streets, a public open space, and 549 parking spaces, but only one entrance and exit onto 24th Road South — as compared to the two current entrances and exits from the property.
The development originally offered a required $2 million affordable housing fund contribution and seven affordable on-site units as required in exchange for increased density than that otherwise allowed by zoning, but the developer has agreed to bump up the latter to nine units.
The proposal has support from the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, but most comments at a Planning Commission meeting on Monday were from neighbors who said the project rubbed them the wrong way.
Those neighbors included representatives from the nearby Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Green Valley, who argued that the new development is gentrifying the traditionally Black neighborhood and offering little in return.
“Listening to the presentation was highly disturbing,” said Judith Davis, a Green Valley resident and community organizer. “It’s more displacement and more gentrification. Developers keep coming into the community, knocking down old buildings, and standing up high-rise buildings or townhomes that are not affordable and add no value to the community or infrastructure.”
On behalf of the slow-growth group Arlingtonians for a Sustainable Future, Anne Bodine made a similar argument. She said that the new development would create primarily market-rate units in an area where a large number of residents make a fraction of the area median income.
At the meeting, developer CC Rock Arlington Owner, LLC — tied to the North Carolina developer Crescent Communities — presented a variety of benefits to the community, from new open space to a new bus shelter built at the site.
The project would include screening between the development and Lomax so residents don’t trespass onto church property, but neighbors said that only highlighted how close the new development would be to the church.
“It feels like the story of David and Goliath,” said the Rev. Adrian Nelson. “We don’t want to fight with the developer, but … Lomax is a special place, it’s a historical place, and [it’s] very clear that the history of Lomax and the history of Green Valley is once again being encroached upon.”
Nelson compared the current development to the historic segregation families in Green Valley faced.
“We could spend time talking about some of the laws that were in place that restricted African Americans in this space,” Nelson said, “and here we do it again. We do it again with smiles, we do it with collegiality, but the bottom line is we’re doing it again.”
Planning commissioners, too, observed that many of the “community benefits” listed would primarily benefit the development.
Planning Commissioner Karen Guevara advanced a pair of failed motions later in the meeting. One was to recommend the project be deferred, and the other was a recommendation that the county create a community land trust to buy properties like this site in historically disadvantaged communities and develop them for a community-serving purpose.
Guevara said, in general, Arlington needs to do better at ensuring the public improvements the developers are presenting are actually benefitting and serving the nearby community.
“We need to take a comprehensive view of who is really benefitting,” Guevara said, “and who is being left out of these spaces.”
Guevara and Striner both put forward and supported motions either recommending deferral of the project or trying to seek more neighborhood-benefitting amenities from the development. Other planning commissioners, however, said they were sympathetic to neighbors’ concerns but they don’t believe those should derail a project that replaces aging hotels with new housing.
“I can empathize with the church,” said Vice-Chair Nia Bagley. “It is distressing for me as a planning commissioner to have so many projects come in that are market rate, which right away excludes a lot of folks who have been excluded in the past. I wish I had the answer to that, but I don’t.”
Bagley also urged Green Valley residents to be welcoming to residents in the new developments.
“Even if there’s been exclusion, part of the fight is including the folks that come so they understand the history,” Bagley said.
In her objections, Guevara reiterated the gentrification argument that a market rate development with relatively little affordable housing could lead to displacement of residents by driving up housing prices in the nearby area.
“It always seems incumbent on the residents being displaced to be the teachers, the welcomers, even though their spaces are the ones being encroached upon,” said Guevara. “I’d say it’s upon the applicant and the county to make those inroads rather than the community.”
Planning Commissioner Eric Berkey encouraged community members frustrated by the limits of Arlington’s affordable housing policy to get involved in ongoing countywide discussions about adjusting requirements from developers — and seeking permission to codify that from Richmond.
“If you’re frustrated about only getting seven units and $2 million, I agree with you,” said Berkey. “We need more contributions. We need more money. We’re not at a place where we can require more, but if you’re interested in being part of that movement, that’s excellent … but this is as much as the county can require.”
The discussion tapped into a core identity question in Arlington: is the county’s progress on its progressive goals like securing more affordable housing too incremental?
“I’m agreeing with the big picture concepts,” said Striner, “but you can’t exclusively look at it through the lens of ‘build build build’ and that will fix everything. You have to look at how this will affect the whole ecosystem.”
The project is scheduled to go to the County Board on Saturday, April 5.
“We’ll continue to fight,” said Nelson. “We’ll take our stone and slingshot and see what happens.”
