More than a dozen major redevelopments are in the pipeline in Arlington, from the second phase of Amazon’s HQ2 to large-scale apartment buildings.
Of the 16 ongoing and anticipated major site plan reviews, the county’s planning division expects 10 of them to go before the County Board for approval over the next nine months, before the beginning of the 2022-23 fiscal year on July 1.
Since 1980, Glebe Road has been considered the border between central and west Ballston.
But in recent years, the dividing lines drawn in Ballston’s 40-year-old sector plan have become more stark, with businesses thriving in one area and struggling in another.
A proposed development for the Xerox building in Rosslyn is under review by county planning staff.
Building owner and financial services company TIAA, along with its real estate management arm, propose to tear down the building at 1616 Fort Myer Drive and build a 30-story, 691-unit apartment tower in its place.
(Updated at 2 p.m.) Plans from a local affordable housing nonprofit to redevelop apartments in the Fort Myer Heights neighborhood, near Rosslyn are ready for public review.
Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH) proposes to redevelop some buildings in a housing complex consisting of a series of three-story garden apartments and a detached single-family residence. These buildings are located within a mile of the Rosslyn and Courthouse Metro stations.
Arlington’s planning department is stretched too thin and cannot take on a bigger workload, its director told the County Board this week.
At full strength, the 30-person staff of the Department of Community, Planning and Housing Development shepherds a myriad development projects and permit applications through county processes, from cafés seeking to renew their outdoor dining permits to developers planning large-scale projects. It also helps to produce the lengthy planning documents that guide the future development of neighborhoods.
A kitchen trailer in Clarendon that popped up last summer in a vacant lot has since been joined by two others.
And now they’re producing meals from more than a half-dozen “ghost kitchens” available on food delivery platforms such as DoorDash and Grubhub. Out of these kitchens come fried chicken sandwiches, asada fries and Asian street food, among other dishes.
(Updated at 6:15 p.m.) Seven years ago, Les Garrison bought a two-family home in the Aurora Highlands neighborhood so that his son’s family could live in one half and the other could be rented out.
He had always intended to renovate the home near Crystal City, which consists of two apartments, each with two bedrooms and one bathroom. He also wants to modernize it, making it accessible to people with disabilities and adding solar panels.
Langston Blvd Plan Meets Resistance — “Following this May’s release of area planning maps and a presentation on density from consultant AECOM, a furious screed was published by Lyon Village Civic Association president John Carten. Though the process is still in the community engagement phase that precedes concrete recommendations, the hint of possible changes in the General Land Use Plan prompted the Lyon Village group to predict a parade of horribles.” [Falls Church News-Press]
New Clarendon Apartment Building Sold — “Trammell Crow Residential has sold the Alexan Earl, a 333-unit multifamily building at 1122 N. Hudson St., to Lincoln Property Co. for $192 million… The Earl represents the first phase of the long-planned Red Top Cab redevelopment… Shooshan continues to plan for the second phase, a roughly 250-unit building fronting Washington Boulevard at the intersection with 13th Street North. It expects to start demolition this fall.” [Washington Business Journal]
Pentagon Metro Station Reopening — “Metro will reopen the Pentagon Station and Pentagon Transit Center to customers beginning with the start of bus and rail service Thursday morning. The station and transit center has been closed since early Tuesday, due to the law enforcement response and investigation following a fatal incident that occurred in the bus bays.” [WMATA]
Chamber Supports Langston Blvd Plan — “The Arlington Chamber of Commerce broadly supports the Plan Lee Highway Scenario Analysis, providing for additional commercial and residential density in an established, aging, yet vibrant and critical transit corridor. Moreover, the Chamber encourages creating flexible land use policies and regulations so as to attract investment to the Langston Boulevard corridor.” [Arlington Chamber of Commerce]
A small splash of green space in Rosslyn may become the prototype for similar installations, or “parklets,” across the county.
In 2018, Arlington County and the Rosslyn Business Improvement District unveiled this parklet, about the size of two parking spaces, on the northwest corner of N. Oak Street and Wilson Blvd. The county and the BID, which maintains the seating spot, installed it as an experiment to see if parklets could be a new tool for adding open space to urban areas.
Arlington Getting Hipper Restaurants? — “Clarkson said the Clarendon-Courthouse area is drawing some bar and restaurant operators from the District who previously haven’t had any locations in Virginia. He said he has seen this type of interest as his team has begun to lease the 17,500 SF of retail in the Landmark Block project. ‘You’re starting to see good retail from D.C., Shaw-type retailers, plant flags in the R-B corridor in Clarendon,’ Clarkson said. ‘Folks I never thought would consider the R-B corridor are now interested… Hopefully there will be some names that haven’t necessarily been seen in Virginia yet, especially on the [food and beverage] and bar side.'” [Bisnow]
Committee Critiques HQ2 Phase 2 Plan — “‘I am still seeing three — on the bulky side, seems to me from the rendering I’ve seen – office buildings at 22 stories high,’ Siegel said. ‘I think the community — certainly, speaking for myself — had hoped for more of a varied skyline.’ James Schroll, the committee chair, said he agreed with Siegel’s concerns. ‘While we appreciate the modifications, I don’t think they achieve what folks were after in our last discussion,’ he said.” [Washington Business Journal]
(Updated at 9:45 a.m. on 7/8/21) Three water “elements” will be the focal points of the planned park space at PenPlace, the second phase of proposed Amazon’s HQ2.
And Kate Orff, the landscape architect designing this park, is drawing her inspiration from Roaches Run and the historic Alexandria Canal, as well as the churning waters of Great Falls Park and the sylvan streams of Rock Creek Park.
