County Board

Arlington County to promote transit use in post-Covid marketing push

By Jo DeVoe

In the next couple of months, Arlington County will launch a campaign encouraging transit use and thanking people who rode Metro and the bus during Covid.

The campaign, aimed at restoring transit ridership rates to pre-pandemic levels, should kick off later this spring or early this summer and will last at least one year, says Department of Environmental Services Director of Transportation Dennis Leach.

“This is an ongoing effort,” he said. “It’s going to take a couple of years to rebuild transit ridership.”

Metrorail use plummeted in March 2020 as large swaths of federal and private employees were directed to work from home. Since then, rail ridership has picked up in fits and starts, most recently recovering by 33% in the fall before the Omicron variant hit. Leach predicts a long recovery for Metro that will depend in large part on federal return-to-work guidelines.

Local bus ridership rates, meanwhile, fell to 50% of pre-Covid rates, as many essential workers continued to take the bus, and had also been recovering quickly before Omicron, he said.

Rates for both modes were ticking up in late February as more people seem to be out and about, as well as commuting to the office, he said. With ridership creeping up and Covid cases remaining low, Arlington County, the Northern Virginia region and the state are all embarking on efforts to further boost public transit use.

Arlington will focus on promoting bus ridership and encouraging Metro trips for accessing entertainment and cultural sites. Targeting Metrorail is paramount, he said, as the lion’s share of Arlington’s pre-pandemic transit riders used Metro, and work-from-home may be around for good.

The county will be seizing on historically high gas prices — fueled by a host of supply issues, most recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine — as a reason to choose public transit.

In Arlington, a gallon of regular gas costs an average of $4.19, up from $2.80 per gallon in 2021 and $3.05 per gallon last month, according to the pump price watch group GasBuddy.

https://twitter.com/GasBuddyGuy/status/1501920976958803969

“Any time gas prices really spike, it’s an opportunity to promote transit as an affordable way to get around,” Leach said. “The ART bus and Metrobus are $2, we offer free transfers from the bus to Metrorail and Metro has introduced a lot of discounts to promote the return to rail.”

Locals can expect to see and hear messages on social media and on Spotify — targeting commuters who listen to music and podcasts — and promotions on buses and in Metro stations.

“Spotify has been helpful in the past for Arlington Transportation Partners to localize where those listeners are and target them where they are,” DES spokeswoman Claudia Pors says. “Hopefully, people are still listening to podcasts on their commute to the living room.”

The local effort is part of a push by the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission to encourage transit ridership. NVTC used a one-time, $500,000 state grant to launch a campaign and asked the jurisdictions in its borders to each contribute to a 20% match, or $100,000.

Arlington is contributing $10,000, which the Arlington County Board approved on Saturday. Other participating localities include Fairfax and Loudoun counties, the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, and entities such as Virginia Railway Express and OmniRide.

NVTC’s effort and Arlington’s plans dovetail from a statewide transit recovery marketing initiative, for which the Commonwealth has set aside $2 million, and are geared toward an already well-connected region.

“We’re the most transit-centric part of the state — about 70% of state transit ridership is in Northern Virginia,” Leach said. “At the state level, they’re much more focused on commuting. In Arlington, that’s important, but you’re going to see us pivot to transit for lifestyle and using transit to do multiple things.”

Virginians can expect to see the state and region promoting public transit in various news outlets and on social media.

Flickr pool photo by Kevin Wolf

TV studio for home improvement network no longer coming to Rosslyn condo basement

By ARLnow.com
The would-be WBITN studios in 2019 (photo via WBITN/Facebook)

A television studio for a new home improvement TV network will not, in fact, open in the basement of an aging condominium building in Rosslyn.

Plans for an elaborate 4,000+ square foot studio space for WBITN — which stands for We Build It New — were first reported by ARLnow in March 2020. It was supposed to open in a lower level of the River Place South complex at 1011 Arlington Blvd, complete with 15 assigned parking spaces.

Despite receiving a use permit for the studio from the Arlington County Board, however, the studio was never built and has cancelled its plans.

The County Board voted to discontinue the use permit at its meeting this past Saturday.

In a report to the Board, county staff did not reveal a reason why the plans fell through, but noted that the business was cited for construction performed without a permit last year.

From the report:

During the first one-year review in March 2021, Code Enforcement inspected the property and cited the applicant for unpermitted work. The applicant worked with the Inspection Services Division to submit applications for the required permits, which required inspection upon completion of the work prior to the issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy for the audiovisual studio. At the time, staff recommended an Administrative Review in six (6) months to monitor the applicant’s progress towards compliance with the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code as well as a County Board review in one year (March 2022). The applicant has not yet acquired the required permits to operate the audio-visual studio, and no longer plans to pursue the audio-visual studio use. Therefore, staff recommends discontinuance since the applicant does not plan to pursue the audio-visual activity.

Arlington County Board greenlights two major residential developments

By Jo DeVoe
1/7

This weekend, the Arlington County Board approved two apartment redevelopments that members lauded as architecturally distinct additions to Columbia Pike and Courthouse.

Members heaped praises on “The Elliott,” a new apartment building replacing the Fillmore Gardens shopping center, a one-story retail strip on the 2600 block of Columbia Pike.

Named for Elliott Burka, who managed the Fillmore Gardens apartments, “The Elliott” will situate 247 market-rate apartments above a grocery store (rumored to potentially be an Amazon Fresh), a renovated CVS store and a new location for Burritos Bros, currently located in the CVS parking lot.

It will also have three levels of below-grade parking.

They commended Arlington-based developer Insight Property Group for realizing community benefits — a public plaza, a pedestrian passageway and a new S. Cleveland Street — and for intending to make room for the existing retail in the completed building.

“This building will be delivering so much more than 247 residential units and the 50,000 square feet of commercial space,”said Board Member Takis Karantonis, who lives near the project. “It delivers the second half of the Penrose plaza, which is arguably, in my opinion at least, one of the most successful public, multipurpose plazas in Arlington County and a true community gathering place.”

Insight Property Group planner Sarah Davidson did not say the name of the grocer coming to “The Elliott,” but she did say the company is “very, very interested” in how to enliven Penrose Square.

Meanwhile, developer Greystar now has the go-ahead to build a glassy triangular skyscraper on the 0.57-acre vacant Wendy’s site in Courthouse, about a block from the Courthouse Metro station. The building will have 16 stories, with 231 residential units and 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

It was approved despite some concerns among residents about the building’s height and the fact that it only provides 75 parking spots and 12 on-site committed affordable units.

“This will be a luxury, very expensive apartment building in Arlington — something we don’t have any deficit of,” said Board Vice-Chair Christian Dorsey. “To the extent that it adds to the housing supply for which there still continues to be strong demand for units at that price point, it helps with our housing strategy and goals for affordable housing indirectly.”

He said he also was concerned there are too few parking spots, but there are underused parking garages nearby to take advantage of.

“My suspicion is the reason people are willing to pay such a premium is to be three minutes from the Metro,” Board Chair Katie Cristol said, adding that “it is incumbent on us [to try to ensure that] it is not only the super wealthy who can live close to transit and all the access it provides.”

As for height, County Board members said the building is only 18 feet taller than the office building previously approved for this site. The Rosslyn to Courthouse Urban Design Study, meanwhile, recommends building no taller than 10 stories in this area.

Leslie Arminsky, speaking on behalf of the Radnor/Ft. Myer Heights Civic Association, said there should be 28 committed affordable units on site — rather than the approved 12 — while Board members opined that they should be committed affordable units for more than 30 years.

County staff countered that 30 years is standard for these projects.

While the Planning Commission was “thrilled” with the on-site affordable units — somewhat unusual for this manner of development project, with most developers opting to contribute monetarily to the county’s affordable housing fund instead — commissioners are concerned Greystar will seek a conversion of apartments to temporary hotel rooms if vacancy rates are high amid the initial leasing of the building, commission member Elizabeth Gearin said.

Hotel conversions are slated to be discussed tomorrow (Tuesday) during the County Board’s recessed meeting.

Morning Poll: Relaxing the dress code for local elected officials?

By ARLnow.com
Officials at the March 2022 Arlington School Board meeting (via APS)

Earlier this month, the Arlington School Board meeting featured some business casual attire on the dais.

That was not well received by the Sun Gazette’s Scott McCaffrey. He took to his editor’s blog to rail against the “sans cravate” look for elected members and other top officials:

This has been festering for a while, but a couple of current members of the Arlington School Board – maskless since last week’s meeting! – are going commando, either without a jacket, without a tie, or without both. Even the superintendent, who makes an obscene amount of money and ought to dress the part, seems to prefer the jacket-and-sweater look, although there may have been a tie hidden underneath.

Some will call the informal look inviting, saying those who expect formality are Luddites and fuddy-duddies. What is that you say from the great beyond, oh sartorially splendid John McLaughlin? “Wrong!” And right you are.

In that earlier incident, Ye Olde Sun Gazette had enough heft in the community that it got the elected official to mend his ways and return to a tie. Not sure our whining about it will make the current elected officials do the same. Nobody seems to care any more about keeping up appearances and maintaining standards. But they should. Sloppiness reflects badly on the School Board, the school system and the community.

Please, fellas, have a little self-respect. This is not Bradenton Beach, Fla., a community I have some knowledge of, where flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts are the norm for men at some meetings. Northern Virginia is supposed to be a little higher up the political food chain.

Officials did not make the same out-of-the-norm sartorial choices at this past weekend’s Arlington County Board meeting — the men on the dais were all wearing suits and ties (though at least one suit jacket came off after a little while).

Many may agree with McCaffrey, but surely some do not. It’s 2022, lots of people are working from their pajamas at home, and perhaps the old ways of dressing should become another pre-pandemic relic, outside of courts, cotillions and the upper echelons of government.

It’s been a decade since Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie made business headlines and of all the problems we have in the world, tech executives and local elected officials ditching neckties remains pretty low down the list. There is, some may believe, a happy medium between a sea of suits and the State of the Union scene from Idiocracy.

What do you think? Should our top local officials keep up suit-and-tie norms as part of their public service, or can the dress codes be relaxed a bit?

Plans for Crystal City Metro second entrance changed to lower costs

By Jo DeVoe
1/4

(Updated at 3:05 p.m.) Arlington County and JBG Smith are changing up plans for a second entrance to the Crystal City Metro station due to projected cost overruns.

An east entrance to the station — a long-standing goal of county transportation planners — is being built through a public-private partnership with the developer, which the County Board authorized in the summer of 2020.

JBG Smith had initially proposed an underground entrance at the corner of 18th Street S. and Crystal Drive. As those plans came into focus last summer, however, they were estimated to cost Arlington County $123-$126 million, which far exceeded the county’s budget of $95 million.

So JBG Smith went back to the drawing board during the winter and came back with the idea to build the entrance at street level and save the county at least $13 million.

This Saturday, the Arlington County Board is slated to approve changes to its agreement with JBG Smith, giving the developer until September to further design an at-grade entrance. Under this scenario, fare gates and a manager’s kiosk would be at street level with primary access from 18th Street S. and secondary access from Crystal Drive.

“This alternative offers cost savings over the current design by significantly reducing the amount of excavation required, reducing the number of elevators from five to three, and removing the need to penetrate the station vault wall,” according to a county report. It also reduces the construction time by three months.

An at-grade entrance still meets county goals and has the support of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, per the report.

“Both the Underground Entrance Design Concept and the At-Grade Alternative equally achieve the goals of adding capacity to meet future growth, creating a multimodal transportation hub, and improving access and accessibility to the Crystal City Metrorail Station from Crystal Drive,” the county said.

The change to the agreement will cost around $232,000 and bring the total cost of the design phase — funded by a $5 million Northern Virginia Transportation Authority grant — to $3.9 million.

County staff say there will be an update on the project for the public this spring. JBG Smith plans to submit a proposal based on the updated designs in October with the goal of County Board approval in November.

If members approve of the designs and cost estimates, construction could start in the winter of 2023 and end in the spring of 2025 — similar to the existing timeline. The project would be extended if the County Board asks the company, or county staff, to find someone else to do it for less money.

Ultimately, Arlington County is on the hook to oversee the project, as it agreed to get the second entrance online by 2025 as part of the incentive package to bring Amazon to Pentagon City, provided the state partially funded it.

The site of the future east entrance is also slated to see new retail, but JBG Smith has put redevelopment plans on hold due to the pandemic, the county says. The east entrance designs leave room to build the retail spaces later on.

As part of the stalled retail project, JBG Smith agreed to hand over land for a public open space called “Metro Market Square,” according to a memo from the developer. The company is working with the county to build this space concurrently with the entrance project.

A map of the east Crystal City Metro station entrance and proposed Metro Market Square open space (staff image)

Marymount proposes housing-hotel conversions for hospitality courses

By Jo DeVoe
Marymount University’s office and educational building and “The Rixey” apartments (file photo)

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.

County Board to consider $1.1 million water main project near Rosslyn

By ARLnow.com
Map showing site of water main project (via Arlington County)

The Arlington County Board is set to approve a contract for a new water main.

The new main will serve the Fort Myer Heights neighborhood, near Rosslyn, and will run under the N. Rhodes Street bridge over Route 50.

“This contract is for the construction of a 12-inch watermain between 14th Street North and North Queen Street,” notes a county staff report. “This contract includes approximately 230 feet of 12-inch ductile iron pipe suspended under the North Rhodes Street / Arlington Boulevard overpass Bridge. The proposed water main will provide system redundancy and improved pressure in the neighborhood.”

At its meeting tomorrow (Saturday), the Board will consider a $1.14 million contract, plus an approximate $230,000 contingency, with Alexandria-based contractor Sagres Construction Corporation.

The new main will replace a smaller pipe that broke and has not been returned to service.

“The Fort Myer Heights Watermain Improvement project is part of the effort to interconnect water supply systems to ensure redundancy,” says the county staff report. “The old 6″ watermain under Route 50 that connected the two sides of the Fort Myer Height’s neighborhood was isolated and abandoned in place after a water main break. The proposed 12″ watermain will interconnect the two sides of the neighborhood and thereby provide the essential redundancy and improved water pressure.”

Residents in the area can expect some temporary traffic and water disruptions during the project. A construction timeline was not given.

Three North Arlington intersections to get new traffic signals, safety improvements

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

A trio of Arlington intersections could soon be getting some new traffic signals and pedestrian safety improvements.

This Saturday, the Arlington County Board is set to review a $2.3 million contract to replace traffic signals that hang from wires to those attached to poles, or mast arms. The improvements also include wider sidewalks, accessible curb ramps and high-visibility crosswalks.

The work will be conducted at the following intersections, each in North Arlington:

The traffic signal replacements are part of a county program replacing outdated traffic signals to meet current federal and local standards.

“Signal upgrade projects implement new technologies such as accessible push button stations, CCTV for monitoring, video detection, and improved intersection lighting to improve safety, efficiency, and accessibility for all modes of travel,” according to a project webpage.

Mast-arm traffic signals on Langston Blvd (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Installing mast arm traffic signals on wide streets has been found to be a cost-effective way to reduce collisions, according to the Federal Highway Administration. One study of Virginia Department of Transportation data, however, found crashes decreased, but not by a statistically significant amount.

The FHWA also says span wire signals can have higher maintenance costs and are generally considered less aesthetically pleasing due to the overhead wires. But after these replacement projects occurred elsewhere in Arlington, some residents took to Nextdoor to mourn the loss of the wire-hung signals, which they said were not as bulky as the large poles that replaced them.

The three projects would join a half-dozen traffic light replacement projects already planned for this summer and fall.

Planned street signal replacements (via Arlington County)

The county is lumping in pedestrian safety and accessibility improvements with the replacements, per a county report.

Currently, the intersections lack curb ramps that are accessible to people with disabilities, while pedestrians have to contend with long crossings and narrow sidewalks, the county says.

Widening the sidewalks and adding accessible curb ramps and high-visibility crosswalks will create “safe, accessible, and user-friendly intersections,” the county says.

County to seek federal funding for new trail around part of Arlington National Cemetery

By Jo DeVoe

Arlington County is applying for $15 million in federal funding to improve cycling and walking connections around Arlington National Cemetery.

The money would partially fund the construction of a long-proposed Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) Wall Trail along Washington Blvd, which would connect Columbia Pike and the Pentagon City area with Memorial Avenue and the Arlington Memorial Bridge into D.C.

The Arlington County Board is scheduled to review the application on Saturday.

“The ANC Wall Trail will provide a missing link in the County and regional non-motorized network that will complete a bicycle and pedestrian connection between all three of the County’s major development corridors,” the county says in a report.

Right now, the cemetery is an “effective barrier to demand for non-motorized travel to and across Memorial Bridge,” according to the county, as security concerns after 9/11 led the Department of Defense to prohibit travel through the burial grounds.

The trail would run along the western side of Washington Blvd from Columbia Pike to Memorial Drive. Currently, there is a trail on the other side of Washington Blvd, a highway also known as State Route 27, but it gets dicey near Memorial Circle for pedestrians and cyclists looking to access the nearby Mt. Vernon Trail or cross into D.C.

Renderings of Arlington National Cemetery expansion and Columbia Pike reconfiguration project (via National Capital Planning Commission)

The Columbia Pike interchange with Washington Blvd is set to be modified as part of the ANC Defense Access Roads Project, which will also move Columbia Pike closer to I-395, realign S. Joyce Street, build a new S. Nash Street connector road, and remove part of Southgate Road.

This work, funded by the federal government and managed by the Federal Highway Administration, will facilitate the addition of 70 acres to the southern portion of the cemetery, making room for 60,000 burial sites and space for the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Visitor Education Center.

Road work is underway, and early next year, road users can expect to be redirected from the Pike to side streets near Pentagon City. The new burial ground could open in late 2025.

New cycling and pedestrian facilities and grading for the connection to the future ANC Wall Trail are also included in the project. Part of its scope includes designing the trail, for which Arlington County agreed to pay $500,000.

The county expects final designs to be developed over the next year or so. The overall cost of the trail is estimated at $25 million.

Once the wall trail is built, cyclists and pedestrians will be able to connect to Pentagon City via S. Joyce Street at the southern end of the ANC Wall Trail. It will allow safer bike and pedestrian travel between Pentagon City and Columbia Pike to D.C. and the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

North of Memorial Avenue, cyclists and pedestrians would be able to link up to the existing trail alongside Route 110, which provides a connection to the Iwo Jima Memorial, to Rosslyn, and to the larger network of bicycle and pedestrian trails along the R-B corridor, the county says.

The $15 million, if awarded, would come from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity” (RAISE) program, which has $1.5 billion earmarked to reimburse localities for surface transportation projects.

The Transportation Department caps awards at $25 million, and one state can receive no more than $225 million. Awards must be split evenly between urban and rural areas.

There is a “low likelihood of a funding award compared with other external transportation capital funding programs,” the county report notes.

Arlington applied last year and was denied funding — along with every other application from Virginia, according to the report. Staff will be meeting with federal transportation staff to understand why and plan to use that information for the new application.

Four Mile Run to be dredged in $5M project to alleviate potential flooding

By Jo DeVoe
1/3

Arlington County plans to dredge stretches of the Four Mile Run and lower Long Branch Creek channels to alleviate potential flooding.

The project targets sections of the waterways near Mt. Vernon Avenue, bordering the City of Alexandria, where U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) determined soil deposit levels were “unacceptable” for stormwater management.

The Arlington County Board is slated to review the project this Saturday.

The USACE inspection determined the channel had “excessive shoaling” due to shallow water depths. Dredging the soil deposits will address this shoaling and ensure the channel can handle large, once-in-a-century floods, the county says.

As part of the project, erosion damage and degraded stream conditions will also be repaired and debris and vegetation will be cleared. Construction is slated to begin in September and last until February, according to a project webpage.

The maintenance work “addresses maintenance of the Four Mile Run streambed that is required by the USACE, would help alleviate flooding along the Long Branch Tributary and would not significantly change any facilities, program or services provided to the community,” per a county report.

The entire project will take four to six months, Department of Environmental Services spokeswoman Aileen Winquest tells ARLnow. For one month, while work on the Lower Long Branch channel takes place, some access to Troy Park will be limited.

“While the dredging work in Lower Long Branch is underway, there will be a small area at the end of Troy Park (closest to Glebe Road) that will be closed because it will be used for accessing the stream,” Winquist said. “There will be parking restrictions near that end of the park. The majority of the park will remain open and accessible.”

There will be a public meeting about the project in May, she said.

Arlington and the City of Alexandria worked with the USACE to design and build a flood-control channel in this portion of Four Mile Run — not far from where the creek meets the Potomac River — in response to repeated flooding that began in the 1940s. The channel, dubbed the Four Mile Run East and West Levee System, was built between 1974 and 1984. USACE inspects the levee every year to see how well it’s being maintained.

Arlington County will pay for the $5 million project and will receive partial reimbursement from the City of Alexandria, leaving the county on the hook for $2.88 million.

Updates to Clarendon’s development plan head to County Board

By Jo DeVoe
1/4

Updates to a 14-year-old plan guiding future development in Clarendon are entering the home stretch.

This Saturday, the Arlington County Board is slated to authorize public hearings on the Clarendon Sector Plan update, which could culminate in a vote on whether to accept the updated plan on April 23. The county is also still seeking feedback on the updates.

Changes to the sector plan were prompted by a bevy of expected near-term redevelopments on the Silver Diner/The Lot, Joyce Motors and Wells Fargo/Verizon sites, as well as projects proposed by the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, the YMCA and George Mason University.

The update did not revisit any of the 2006 plan’s overarching goals, which envision Clarendon as an “urban village” with “accessible and connected spaces, and a rich mix of uses” that build on the area’s historical commercial focus, according to the county.

Instead, the updates focused on whether the 14-year-old plan’s recommendations for specific sites needed to be updated as new proposals come in. It provides guidance on land use, building heights and forms, and transportation, and explores how the county can redevelop a parcel it owns with some combination of a new fire station, open space and affordable housing.

Members of nearby civic associations, the Planning Commission and the Housing Commission are urging the county to prioritize different elements on the publicly-owned site, located at 10th Street N., between N. Hudson and Irving streets.

The lot is currently is home to three aging county buildings: Fire Station 4 (3121 10th St. N), the Fire Prevention Office (1020 N. Hudson St.) and Clarendon House, which has been vacant since the county moved the mental health rehab program run by the Department of Human Services to Sequoia Plaza (2120 Washington Blvd) in 2015.

Both Fire Station 4 and the Fire Prevention Office — home to the offices of the Fire Marshal and Battalion Chief — have reached the end of their useful life, the plan says. The Fire Prevention Office building will be relocated to county offices at 2020 14th Street N. in Courthouse while Fire Station 4 could be rebuilt on the same property or elsewhere.

Fire Station 4 and the Fire Prevention Office (via Google Maps)

The Planning Commission favors using the land for a blend of government and community facilities, such as a rooftop public space above a proposed fire station.

Ashton Heights Civic Association President Scott Sklar writes in a letter to the county that neighbors envision “a significant, unique playground for children from the new residential buildings, along with some basketball, racquet or pickleball courts in the space adjacent to the fire station, as it would be centrally located to serve Clarendon and nearby residents.”

Lastly, the Housing Commission would like to see affordable housing co-located at the site, as the sector plan area has only 82 committed affordable housing units — the lowest number in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, says Housing Commission Chair Eric Berkey said in a letter to the county.

“The Commission stated the priority should not be to provide luxurious amenities to those who live in single-family detached homes, but rather to provide homes to those who cannot afford them,” Berkey said. “Anything other than a structure which utilizes the full zoned height maximum would be a missed opportunity for the County-owned land.”

(more…)

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