(Updated on 1/29/23) Arlington County suffered another defeat last week in the pre-trial proceedings for the Missing Middle lawsuit.
It appealed an earlier court decision that the 10 residents suing Arlington County — alleging the County Board illegally approved the Missing Middle zoning amendments — have standing to do so.
It won’t ever beat “All I Want for Christmas is You” on the charts but a new Arlington-specific Christmas song is out, recorded by the group that was on the opposition side of several land-use flashpoints this year.
Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future, a neighborhood group that has advocated against everything from Missing Middle to a new planning document for Langston Blvd, dropped an alternative “12 Days of Christmas” this week.
Eighteen properties formerly within a special “revitalization district” in Cherrydale will soon officially be eligible for redevelopment with 2- to 6-unit homes.
On Monday, the Arlington Planning Commission unanimously adopted changes to the county’s General Land Use Plan map that removed 18 properties from the boundaries of the Cherrydale revitalization district, outlined in the 1994 Cherrydale Revitalization Plan.
Although Arlington County is set to go to court next summer over its Missing Middle zoning ordinances, it has not stopped approving these new housing projects.
Judge David Schell has scheduled a 5-day trial to begin on July 8, 2024 after ruling in October that the 10 residents suing Arlington over the ordinances had standing. Among other claims, they argue the county violated state law by not sufficiently considering the impacts of Missing Middle.
The end of the election is drawing nearer: early voting ends on Saturday and Tuesday is Election Day.
At this point, the roughly 12,000 early votes cast are almost evenly split between in-person and mailed-in ballots, per the Arlington County election turnout dashboard. Some 44,000 ballots need to be returned between now and the close of the polls on Tuesday to surpass turnout in 2019, the last similar election year.
Early voting is picking up speed in Arlington while Arlington County Board candidates focus on Missing Middle and taxes.
The general election on Nov. 7 is less than two weeks away and at this point, far more people are voting early in person this year compared to 2019, the last election year without gubernatorial or presidential races.
The resident lawsuit against Arlington County’s Missing Middle zoning ordinances can move forward.
Today (Thursday), retired Fairfax County Judge David Schell denied most of the county’s motions to dismiss the case, according to an attorney for the 10 residents who sued Arlington. He had put off making a decision for one month when the parties last convened in court in September.
Attorneys for residents contesting the new Missing Middle zoning ordinances and Arlington County squared off today (Tuesday) in court — but a decision will not be reached until at least next month.
Residents sued the county earlier this year, shortly after the Arlington County Board adopted the Missing Middle zoning ordinance changes authorizing 2-6 unit homes in areas previously zoned for single-family homes only.
Last week, ARLnow reported that neighbors successfully dissuaded a developer from building a duplex in the Tara-Leeway Heights neighborhood.
Their concerns included traffic and parking challenges on the street, writing that the “proposed development will only exacerbate this, endangering residents, including the many children who live on the block.”
Using a restrictive covenant in a 1938 deed, neighbors in the Tara-Leeway Heights neighborhood convinced a developer to build a single-family home instead of a duplex.
The home, 1313 N. Harrison Street, is not far from a wall that separated the historically Black neighborhood of Hall’s Hill from single-family-home subdivisions originally built exclusively for white people. In addition to specifying that only one home can be built on the lot, a second provision in the deed bars owners from selling to people who are not white.
Last month, some neighbors told a developer they would “oppose any attempt to obtain permits” for a duplex in the Tara-Leeway Heights neighborhood, and the developer backed down.
McLean-based BeaconCrest Homes bought a single-family home at 1313 N. Harrison Street, an area residents have dubbed “Larchmont.” When it announced to neighbors its plans to build a duplex, a skirmish over the lot’s future — based on a provision in a deed from 1938 — ensued.
Arlington didn’t start the ‘Missing Middle’ fire — localities across the country and around the world have been trying to figure out how to deal with rapidly rising housing costs.
While Arlington’s approval of new zoning regulations allowing small-scale multifamily housing in previously single-family-detached only neighborhoods was not the first time a major jurisdiction made such a move, the underlying debate is still raging in certain pockets of cyberspace.
