The owner of a hotel in Green Valley is signaling interest in building apartments.
Capital Second Investments, which owns Hotel Pentagon at 2480 S. Glebe Road near I-395, has filed a conceptual site plan application envisioning a 467-unit apartment building and 36 townhouses. Some entities take this step before filing a formal site plan application to get early feedback on the feasibility of their proposal.
The concept from Capital Second Investments situates the housing on a site that currently houses the Hotel Pentagon — which used to be a Best Western, and consists of a standalone structure and a trio of long, two-story buildings — as well as the Comfort Inn Pentagon City, a single tower next door.
Both hotels are listed at 2480 S. Glebe Road, which is at the corner of 24th Road S. and S. Glebe Road, surrounded by I-395, the Lomax AME Zion Church, some auto body shops and two apartment complexes.
Capital Second Investments proposes to fill the 467-unit building with:
- 99 “junior 1-bedroom” units, which are studios with a small space that can be separated off
- 191 1-bedroom units
- 59 1-bedroom units with dens
- 118 2-bedroom units
- 608 underground parking spaces
- A pool and an amenity deck
Across a tree-lined path from the complex would be two rows of stacked townhomes, with a typical floor area of 2,425 square feet, and parking.
Conceptual site plan applications are preliminary by nature — a step some take before submitting a formal site plan application, which would be reviewed by staff and Arlington County’s various citizen committees.
“This application, and its administrative review process, is intended to provide guidance to prospective applicants in the preparation of land use development applications,” the application says.
Prior to becoming the Hotel Pentagon, the Best Western on S. Glebe Road was the scene of prostitution-related run-ins with law enforcement. In one publicized case, a man who forced a 16-year-old girl into prostitution at the motel later pleaded guilty to sex trafficking a minor.
A man was shot and seriously injured in Courthouse early this morning.
Initial reports suggest a man was shot in the lower torso in the parking garage of the Hilton Garden Inn on N. Courthouse Road, a block from Arlington County police headquarters, potentially as a result of a robbery.
The victim was hospitalized with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Police are working to sort out the exact circumstances surrounding the shooting.
“The investigation into the events that preceded the shooting is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact ACPD’s tip line at 703-228-4180 or [email protected],” police said via social media.
UPDATE: The victim sustained serious, non life-threatening injuries. The investigation into the events that preceded the shooting is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact ACPD’s tip line at 703-228-4180 or [email protected]
— ArlingtonCountyPD (@ArlingtonVaPD) February 15, 2023
New: Shooting at the Hilton Garden Inn on N. Courthouse Rd just 1/2 block from @ArlingtonVaPD Headquarters. One person shot. @FairfaxCountyPD K9 assisting. @ARLnowDOTcom @matthewyoung31 @DCCelebrity @RealTimeNews10 #police #arlington #crime pic.twitter.com/k2wOIzPLc0
— Dave Statter (@STATter911) February 15, 2023
(Updated at 2:50 p.m.) Arlington County police are investigating after two people were found dead in a hotel room this afternoon.
Initial reports suggest that police were called after a guest failed to check out on time at the Inns of Virginia hotel, at 3335 Langston Blvd, and officers then found a man and a woman unresponsive in their room. Medics pronounced them dead on the scene.
Police are now trying to determine what happened, but so far there is no indication that the deaths are being considered suspicious.
“ACPD is conducting a death investigation in the 3300 block of Langston Boulevard,” police spokeswoman Ashley Savage confirmed to ARLnow. “At approximately 12:33 p.m., police were dispatched and located an adult male and female deceased inside a hotel room. Based on the preliminary investigation, the deaths do not appear suspicious and there is no apparent ongoing threat to the public. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine cause and manner of death.”
Arlington County has seen an elevated level of opioid overdoses over the past few years.
In August 2020, two people were found dead of a suspected overdose in the Buckingham neighborhood. Then, in December 2021, two people were found dead in Ashton Heights of “narcotics-related” causes.
A project to redevelop the Key Bridge Marriott building appears to have stalled with no indication of picking back up.
That may be related to signs of financial distress for the property owner and developer, Woodridge Capital Partners.
The Arlington County Board approved the project at 1401 Langston Blvd in Rosslyn — on a prominent plot of land overlooking the river and parts of D.C. — on March 24, 2020. The applicant, Woodridge affiliate KBLH, LLC, proposed to partially demolish and renovate the existing hotel and construct two new residential buildings: one with 151 condo units and one with 300 apartments.
Six months after the Marriott shuttered the hotel in July 2021, the Washington Business Journal noted no signs of progress on the project. ARLnow checked permit records and found only one new permit has been filed since, back in February 2022.
Meanwhile, a search of property records indicates Woodridge is behind on its 2022 real estate taxes, owing $426,488, which was due in October.
Evidence of a worsening financial situation for Woodridge is stronger on the West Coast. In Los Angeles, where the company is based, it undertook a $2.5 billion redevelopment project to convert the top two floors of an iconic hotel in Los Angeles, the Fairmount Century Plaza Hotel, into expensive condos. It also built two 40-story condo towers on the site, with units costing $2-12 million.
Woodridge finished the renovated Century Plaza hotel in the middle of the pandemic and the condo towers last summer, as L.A.’s housing market began to falter. It had managed $200 million in presales in 2019.
Now, an affiliate of Woodridge called Next Century Partners is set to lose its stake in the project via a foreclosure auction scheduled for Dec. 14, commercial real estate data group CoStar reported.
Farther north, a ritzy hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood, owned by Woodridge, closed after the company defaulted on a $56 million loan from Deutsche Bank.
Woodridge did not respond to requests for comment. Oaktree Capital, an affiliate of one of the project’s backers, declined to comment.
“The only upcoming groundbreaking Woodridge will be involved on is one that will find it beneath a patch of clover,” a reader quipped in a tip, suggesting that the project may need to change hands to move forward. “Next developer please!”
Arlington County planners say designs for the Days Inn redevelopment on Route 50 don’t pay sufficient homage to the motel’s mid-century modern bones.
Applicant and owner Nayan Patel — doing business as Arlington Boulevard LLC — proposes to replace the 128-unit, 2-story motel across the street from the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall with apartments and 3,000 square feet of retail.
Possible community benefits include a slow-speed, shared-use drive that provides a pedestrian and cycling connection to the Arlington Blvd Trail, protected bike lanes and on-site committed affordable housing units. Residents of the the 251-unit, 8-story building at 2201 Arlington Blvd will have access to an off-leash dog run.
The Arva Apartments will borrow its name from the 67-year-old building’s original name, the Arva Motor Hotel — a portmanteau of Arlington, Virginia. It will feature reconstructions of the hotel’s triangular sign and glassy lobby exterior.
But the county says the project designers, STUDIOS Architects, can do more to emphasize this history.
The Pershing Drive General Land Use Plan study, a 2021 document that outlines the community’s vision for this site, says architectural features should honor the motel’s mid-century design or the history of the adjacent Washington-Lee Apartments. It also says the developer should incorporate the existing triangular sign and the two-story, glassy lobby at the corner of Pershing Drive and Arlington Blvd.
“While the proposal incorporates a recreated sign and a lobby area that resembles the original lobby, the structures themselves are not actually preserved,” county planner Peter Schulz said in a presentation. “Staff also believes that the architecture above the ground level does not do enough to honor either the mid-century design of the existing motel or the historic Washington-Lee apartments.”
STUDIOS Architecture Principal Ashton Allan said in a presentation that the designs embrace the Moderne and mid-century modern styles and blends them with other styles in Lyon Park to do something new.
“As we set out to add our design to this collection, we wanted to draw inspiration from history, but also make our own statement in this chorus of voices,” he said.
(Updated 4 p.m. on 10/28/22) JBG Smith is under contract to sell The Inn of Rosslyn, which it purchased nearly two years ago, according to permits filed with Arlington County.
Now, a new developer — “MR 1601 Fairfax Drive Property LLC,” an affiliate of Monument Realty — is proposing to redevelop the site with an apartment building, according to an ownership disclosure statement.
Although designated as an “important” property on the Arlington Historic Resources Inventory list, the property will be demolished. Iconic features of the 65-year-old building in the Radnor-Fort Myer Heights neighborhood will live on in embellishments to the apartment building.
In December 2020, developer JBG Smith purchased the Rosslyn area motel, the Americana Hotel in Crystal City and two apartment buildings, one of which is adjacent to the Inn of Rosslyn. These four buildings were owned by a local family for about 60 years, but surviving members decided to sell after hotel profits stagnated during the pandemic.
And now, the developer is reselling the property.
The plans for 1601 Fairfax Drive, about a half-mile from the Courthouse Metro station, are taking shape as plans for the Americana Hotel have already started moving through Arlington’s review processes. The developer proposes to demolish the motel and construct an 8-story, nearly 80-foot-tall apartment building with 141 units and 87 below-grade parking spaces.
Monument Realty is foregoing retail on the site because of the site’s sloping topography, and “lack of sufficient pedestrian traffic to support retail uses,” writes Nicholas Cumings, the developer’s land use attorney for the project. (Coincidentally, sloping topography is posing logistical challenges for the developer at the Americana Hotel site.)
Despite the “important” historic designation, a 14-year-old redevelopment plan for the area recommends redeveloping the property with a building up to 12 stories and 125 feet tall, with optional retail and a main entrance on Fairfax Drive and loading and parking off N. Queen Street, per the filing.
The hotel site “could accommodate additional density and height, because this area is adjacent to high volume Arlington Boulevard and the sloping topography will minimize the appearance and impact of greater heights,” according to the 2008 Fort Myer Heights North Plan.
The plan additionally calls for redesigning Fairfax Drive as a “complete street” serving pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users and drivers, while stipulating that new development should have architecture that mimics the existing neighborhood.
“The architecture of the proposed building will complement and draw from the architecture of the existing building and the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood,” the plan says. “The Applicant’s proposed building design is partly influenced by the building’s distinctive features, which are honored through the façade cantilevers, recreation of the existing ’50’ sign and balcony railings mimicking the zig-zag design of the existing railings.”
A fight inside a hotel led to gunfire and a police investigation early this morning in Pentagon City.
The incident reportedly happened at the DoubleTree hotel at 300 Army Navy Drive around 2:30 a.m. Monday.
“Upon arrival, it was determined a group of four male subjects had been involved in a fight inside a hotel,” said an Arlington County Police Department crime report. “The subjects left the scene prior to the arrival of officers. Responding officers canvassed the area and recovered evidence confirming a shot had been fired outside the building and located damage to the exterior ceiling. No injuries were reported.”
A resident of an apartment building next door said that the commotion woke people up in the middle of the night.
“There was something crazy going on near Lenox Club apartment complex,” an anonymous tipster told ARLnow this morning. “Woke us and people up all over the building and at the DoubleTree… Sounded like screaming and maybe gunshots or someone taking a baseball
bat to the walls.”
“The investigation is ongoing,” ACPD said.
A 36-story, 331-room “state of the art” Hilton hotel is coming to Rosslyn.
The hospitality giant this morning announced the signing of an agreement to operate the high-rise hotel on the former Holiday Inn site. With rooms overlooking D.C. and the Potomac River, the hotel will also feature a rooftop event space and 28,000 square feet of meeting space.
More from a press release:
Today, Hilton announces the signing of Hilton at The Key, Arlington-Rosslyn, providing even more options to travelers looking for a state of the art, full-service hotel just minutes from Washington, D.C. Located at the foot of the Potomac River’s historic Francis Scott Key Bridge in Arlington, Virginia, the 36-story, 331-room property is surrounded by numerous corporate headquarters based in Rosslyn’s business district and minutes from the 11-acre riverfront Fort Bennett Park and Palisades Trail.
The modern hotel is under development as part of The Key, a project that includes a destination restaurant, street-level retail, and 517 luxury apartments with panoramas of the water and the nation’s capital. Once completed, Hilton at The Key will feature approximately 28,000 square feet of flexible and modern meeting spaces, including an event space on the 36th floor with sweeping 360-degree views of the Washington, D.C., skyline, the Potomac River and Arlington, Virginia.
“Dittmar Company is proud to partner with Hilton as we bring a true destination meeting and event facility to Arlington, Virginia, and the surrounding DMV area,” said Greg Raines, an executive at Dittmar Company.
The 18-story, 50-year-old Holiday Inn was imploded two years ago to make way for the massive new development, which has since been dubbed The Key. A construction update last month noted that crews were preparing to pour concrete for the tenth floor of the building.
The development’s 500+ unit rental apartment building has been christened “Rosslyn Towers.”
“Rosslyn Towers is the latest in the Dittmar Company portfolio of Arlington Luxury Multi-Family deliveries,” says The Key’s website. “The residences will have first class finishes to rival the unmatched location and views present at this iconic location.”
The apartment’s “uplifting live/work/play environment” will feature “an amenity package that is second to none.”
In the shadow of Amazon’s HQ2, the Americana Hotel stands vacant and ready for redevelopment.
The hotel at 1400 Richmond Highway, which JBG Smith purchased in late 2020, is in a prime location. Met Park, the first phase of Amazon’s headquarters, is across the street. PenPlace, the project’s second phase, is down the road. The Crystal City Metro station is a block south.
But the prospect of building apartments and retail right next to a global tech company’s second headquarters came with two issues: physical problems with the land and questions about when, and how, neighboring properties and Route 1 would change.
The Americana property slopes down significantly. It abuts an elevated portion of Route 1 that the Virginia Department of Transportation proposes lowering. The building is surrounded by apartment buildings, a hotel and a VDOT-owned patch of grass, all of which could be redeveloped or reconfigured in the future.
JBG Smith representatives say the proposal, filed in April and accepted by the county this month, accounts for these conditions and questions. They say it meets a county zoning requirement that towers be separated by 60 feet and a recommendation in the Crystal City Sector Plan that podiums be separated by 40 feet.
“We have designed the building around trying to maintain the maximum flexibility for that future development, but there is nothing in the current plan that is in any way not compliant or fully in accordance with the sector plan and zoning ordinance,” land use attorney Kedrick Whitmore told members of the Long Range Planning Committee this summer.
The aging Americana Hotel — which was once featured in a Russell Crowe movie — would be replaced with a 644-unit, 19-story tall building with 3,674 square feet of ground floor retail, according to the application materials. A below-grade parking garage would provide 191 on-site parking spaces and an existing garage at the Bartlett Apartments (520 12th Street S.) would provide an additional 206 off-site spaces.
The developer aims to achieve LEED Gold certification.
“The building includes work-from-home, fitness, and other amenity spaces, as well as outdoor access to balconies and two rooftop terraces with unobstructed views of the surrounding landmarks,” Whitmore wrote in a letter included in JBG Smith’s application.
And the developer aims to break ground before VDOT gets started on rebuilding Route 1 at-grade. VDOT plans to wrap up a second study phase of the proposed changes early next year.
“We do acknowledge that’s an issue we have to discuss with county staff and VDOT,” Jack Kelly, a Vice President with JBG Smith, told the LRPC. “We made high-level assumptions on setbacks, based on what we know about the future alignment of Route 1.”
The developer also had to do “a lot of guesswork” to design around potential redevelopment projects for the adjacent Embassy Suites by Hilton Crystal City National Airport, The Paramount apartments and the VDOT parcel, said Malcolm Williams, an associate with JBG Smith, in the same meeting.
Bye, Bye Bank Building — “A new residential development is on the boards for Columbia Pike. Marcus Partners filed plans late last week with Arlington County for a new 250-unit residential development at the site of the Bank of America office building at 3401 Columbia Pike. The six-story building will have ground floor retail, a central courtyard and 287 parking spaces on 2.5 below grade levels.” [UrbanTurf]
It’s Official: No Caucus — From Blue Virginia: “The @arlingtondems announce that their School Board Endorsement Vote process is canceled, as there is only one candidate (Bethany Zecher Sutton) left after the other withdrew.” [Twitter]
Rents Still Rising — “The median Arlington apartment rent in April was up 16.8 percent from a year before, the third highest growth rate among the nation’s 100 large urban areas, according to new data. The median monthly rental for an apartment in the county last month was $1,999 for a one-bedroom unit and $2,420 for two bedrooms, according to data reported by Apartment List.” [Sun Gazette]
Truck Crash Caught on Camera — From Dave Statter: “Just happened. 3rd crash in as many days on I-395S at Exit 8C/Rt 1. It appears the red car didn’t stop & no other cars struck. @VSPPIO has all lanes open.” [Twitter]
Protest Outside DEA HQ in Pentagon City — “I’m outside DEA headquarters in Arlington, where protests have gathered to draw attention to terminally ill patients’ rights to try experimental drugs like psilocybin.” [Twitter, The Hill]
WaPo Reporter Rappels Down Hotel — “On Thursday and Friday, about 80 people, including two local elected officials, a Washington Post reporter, and a member of the D.C. Divas women’s football team, dressed in full pads and uniform, rappelled down the side of the Crystal City Hilton to raise funds and awareness for New Hope Housing.” [Washington Post]
Boeing HQ May Draw More Companies — “Even without a sizable addition of jobs or expansion, Northern Virginia landing another major corporate headquarters has strategic ‘marketing value,’ Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, said in an interview. The presence of a headquarters attracts the attention of other corporations, as well as site-selection consultants who advise companies where to locate new facilities. ‘Nothing draws a crowd like a lot of people,’ Clower said.” [Washington Business Journal]
Metro: Ridership Rebounding — “Metro ridership is outpacing projections through the first three quarters of fiscal year 2022 by nearly 40 percent. Through March, ridership has exceeded the initial forecast by 28 million passenger trips as more people chose bus and rail for travel throughout the region. Metrobus leads the way, accounting for 60 percent of overall Metro ridership, compared to about 40 percent for rail.” [WMATA]
It’s Tuesday — Clear throughout the day. High of 68 and low of 48. Sunrise at 6:02 am and sunset at 8:11 pm. [Weather.gov]
Marymount University is seeking Arlington County Board approval to convert some of its student housing in Ballston into hotel rooms permanently.
The conversions would occur at “The Rixey,” an apartment building Marymount owns and operates at 1008 N. Glebe Road as graduate student housing. Marymount intends to repurpose 133 of the 267 units into hotel rooms to give students studying hotellery practical experience.
“The addition of hotel units to the Rixey building will be used to support and enhance Marymount University’s Hospitality Innovation Master of Business Administration (MBA) program by providing students with hands-on experience in the hotel industry,” a county report said.
This request follows several other recent proposals to temporarily convert apartment units into hotels during the initial leasing of these buildings, the report said.
For example, to recuperate revenue losses from pandemic-era vacancies, Dittmar asked the Arlington County Board last summer to allow three- to 30-day stays in 75 furnished units that are typically used for longer residential stays.
Some worried these conversions would harm rental housing affordability, but the County Board ultimately approved Dittmar’s request. County planners intend to study these conversions “in the next few years” to inform a potential hotel conversion policy, according to the report.
Staff say Marymount’s proposal, however, is “distinctly different” because the conversions would be permanent, would figure into a hands-on learning program and would add hotel rooms the county needs.
“The proposed conversion would also establish a concentration of new hotel rooms to help counterbalance the loss of 1,600 hotel rooms in Arlington over the past two years and would allow Marymount University to broaden its offerings as an anchor institution in Ballston,” the report said.
Recent losses include the Americana Hotel and the Inn of Rosslyn, both of which were sold to developer JBG Smith for residential redevelopment, as well as The Highlander and the Rosslyn Holiday Inn.
Marymount purchased “The Rixey” for $95 million in 2019 after it had purchased the land underneath in order to lease it to local real estate developer The Shooshan Company, which built the apartments. Marymount also owns the Ballston Center office building next door, using some floors for office and educational space and leasing other floors.
The Board is slated to review the proposal this Saturday.
