Dear Friends,
I hope everyone had a good summer and start to the fall.
Thanks to our APS colleagues, the County Board was able to meet at the Syphax Center in their meeting room for our September meetings. We had some security upgrades done to our own meeting room and the work was not done in time for our September meeting.
Adaptive Redevelopment
The main regular meeting item we had this month was various approvals for the redevelopment of an office building project at 1840 Wilson Blvd. The site will become a seven-story mixed-use building with up to 187 residential units and ground-floor retail. The underground garage will be reused, which saves money and disruption. The project will create a much-improved environment with landscaping around the building. It will provide 10 committed affordable dwelling units and be a LEED Gold building. Discussions are underway with two favorite establishments, Rhodes Grill and Il Radicchio, about coming back after the construction.
This project is likely the beginning of a number of similar conversions of older, empty office building sites to residential use with ground floor retail that take down the building, but reuse the parking garage. We are continuing to work to remove regulatory barriers to the adaptive reuse of older commercial office buildings. If we can adapt well and be flexible, the changing work environment with more virtual work and less need for office space can yield much-needed residential units. And, it can improve the streetscape for everyone. Covid push needed flexibility to our commercial zoning (e.g. outdoor seating for restaurants), and we are continuing to look at ways to improve our flexibility. We are calling this CMR2.0: Commercial Market Resiliency 2.0.
Long Bridge and Local History
Our consent items included an agreement with Virginia Rail Express (VRE) about moving utilities and trail lights if needed to construct the new $2.3 Billion Long Bridge project over the Potomac River. This item is a very small part of an important Federal and State project that will open a rail bottleneck that impedes rail traffic all up and down the East Coast. It is exciting to see this project continuing to move forward. Besides more train tracks, it will include a separate bridge for pedestrians and bikes, which I and many others pushed for in the project. I’ve biked across the 14th Street Bridge several times in the past and it was always a little nerve-wracking despite the wide sidewalk.
Historic Preservation
Under consent we also approved a number of small grants for historic preservation. One to support the Black Heritage Museum, another toward renovation of the historic Hume School building, and another to the “stumbling stones” project for 30 stones to mark where enslaved people once lived in Arlington. This latter is a great collaborative project with Arlington Public Schools. Students provide much of the research, production and placement of the stones. We also acquired a house that will enlarge Douglas Park as part of our planned acquisitions for park space.
Welcoming Torri Huske
One of the very fun things I got to do last month was to help welcome Torri Huske home after her Olympic victories in Paris. We held a welcoming event at Long Bridge Aquatics Center and Torri graciously spent hours signing autographs and taking pictures with her younger fans that even got to hold one of her medals. It was my first time to see an Olympic gold medal, too. Torri is a great role model and it’s wonderful that Arlington is her hometown.
Expanded Housing Options (EHO) Missing Middle Suit:
As you may have heard, the judge in the EHO case did not rule favorably for the County. However, the Court has not yet entered a final order on this matter. The deadline for entry is October 25, 2024. Until the final order is entered, the judge’s order is still subject to change, so I cannot comment more at the moment. I do fully expect the Board to appeal the decision.
My Future
Finally, I am beginning to think about what to do with this newsletter after I step down from the Board at the end of the year. I think I would like to continue to write from time to time about local and other issues I think my readers might like to know about, but I do not want to make it on such a regular monthly schedule, nor confine it to County Board matters. I fully expect a number of my readers will no longer want to receive a newsletter from me, but I expect some would. So…please just hit reply and let me know what you would – or would not – like if you have thoughts or suggestions.
As always, I hope this newsletter has been helpful and welcome comments.
All best,
Libby
