Posts about Alexandria

The project is now in the middle of its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) phase. Officials have refined a set of 9 alternatives down to 3, plus a 4th no-build scenario. The City of Alexandria is now required by law to evaluate each of the 3 alternatives that made it through the screening phase.

Some residents at a public meeting on April 19 vehemently opposed alternatives B and D, because the project's construction could temporarily affect the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Both of those alternatives place the station farther north than the other alternative, A.

The speakers came primarily from Potomac Greens and Old Town. Some were fine with a station at A, while others opposed the station entirely. For most, the Parkway was the primary reason they cited, though some also feared construction noise and didn't want a station near their homes.

Impact on the GW Parkway

Those opposed to alternatives B and D repeatedly lauded the uniqueness of the parkway among capital cities worldwide. They demanded that officials throw out any build alternative that interferes with the roadway, even for two years or less.

Alternative D, located closest to existing and planned density in the area, probably has the most impact on the GW Parkway. This alternative requires elevating tracks to cross over the existing Metrorail and CSX tracks, passing through an aerial station roughly where the movie theater now stands, and then passing back over the CSX tracks to rejoin existing tracks.

There are construction benefits and drawbacks for this option, but it undoubtedly puts the infill station much closer to existing neighborhoods and the densest portion of future planned development.

At least two speakers at the meeting asked for a traffic study, but this study has already been done as part of the Potomac Yard small area plan (chapter 6). One infill Metro station isn't a traffic panacea, but according to the study, traffic will be worse in the Potomac Yards area if the station is not built.

The Potomac Yard small area plan calls for drastically-reduced density without a Metro station. But even in this scenario, traffic will be worse than with higher density and a Metro station. The closer the Metro station is to existing and planned density, the more cars it will take off the road.

Nonetheless, Old Town resident Poul Hertel reached as far back as 1902 to protest impacts on the Parkway, quoting a document from the McKinley Commission referring to the "Mount Vernon Road" as "affording an opportunity for the most refreshing and delightful drive to be had in any direction from Washington and not to be equaled at any great capital of the world."

While historical context is important, the massive back-ups on this main artery into the city mean McKinley's commission surely would have enjoyed the "refreshing and delightful" drive far less today. They probably would have made a temporary trade-off in parkway accessibility to save green space farther out from the city and temper traffic increases long-term.

The EIS process

Alexandria staff explained at the meeting that they are working with the National Park Service, and nothing will go forward without approval by the NPS. There are also other requirements regarding technical and financial viability, among other things.

Officials cannot throw out alternatives during the EIS phase until the city puts forward a locally-preferred alternative. But speakers demanding staff eliminate parkway-disturbing options did not yield, as speaker after speaker stood up to call for the city to change course in a way that is not possible.

David Fromm of Del Ray pointed out that the city could have done a better job explaining the reasons the screening process put forward each alternative. He was right, but it didn't appear that the most vocal in the audience would have been convinced by any option that breached the sanctity of the GW Parkway, regardless of long-term traffic benefits.

City staff periodically referred speakers to the PY website since they could not cover the vast amount of information about the potential development in a single public meeting.

Density, transit and the urban core

One speaker seemed to understand the larger point. Though she is a Potomac Greens resident who surely will be impacted by the construction, she pointed out that without the infill station, future growth in the area will make it so everyone will have plenty of time to admire things along the GW Parkway-turned-parking-lot, as traffic continues to get worse.

Large growth in the DC area is coming, so area municipalities need to responsibly manage that growth with improved infrastructure. Her statement brought sporadic applause, indicating she was not the lone supporter of the station.

For tangible proof of the traffic-reducing impacts of public transit and responsible land use planning, look no further than the Rosslyn-Ballston-Clarendon corridor. In this corridor, with access to public transit, people choose to live closer to jobs, stores, restaurants, etc.

In turn, people use their cars less, if they keep a car at all. This is why traffic volumes in that corridor have stayed relatively flat over the past 30 years despite massive development. Creating these livable communities reduces driving and therefore traffic.

With growth coming to the DC area, we can either clear-cut and pave over more outlying forests, or add more density close to the core. The most responsible action is to create dense, livable communities with good access to multi-modal transportation.

Even if urban living isn't for everyone, real estate pricing and trends indicate there's a shortage of walkable, transit-oriented communities and an over-supply of distant, exurban sprawl.

To be good stewards of our region, we simply must build density near transit near the urban core. If the most feasible option requires disturbing the GW Parkway during construction, that should not be a reason to avoid it. Temporarily interfering with GW Parkway traffic patterns does not outweigh losing acres of land that would have to be built farther out to replace the lost units and transportation capacity in Alexandria.

Audio of the April 19 public meeting is available here, and the presentation itself is available here.

Cross-posted at The Arlandrian.

"The first iteration is almost always horrible," said Harriet Tregoning, DC's planning director. Tregoning argued that communities need to be constantly vigilant and to push back through review and input.

An example of a federal building with negative impact is the FBI Building in downtown Washington. When asked if they thought it was "the worst building in DC," a significant portion of the audience raised their hands. Foreboding and removed from the street, this building serves as an example of what not to do.

On the other hand, the sheer number of workers a new federal office brings into an area can activate the neighborhood. This activity can spur more growth and create new urban fabric where there previously was none. They can give birth to entirely new neighborhoods, or revive ones long since written off.

Qualities of many federal facilities pose problems

Federal office buildings are inherently single-use. Office workers do little for neighborhoods after business hours. This can be especially damaging when agencies cluster, creating large single-use neighborhoods. By spreading offices throughout the region, federal projects can invigorate many different neighborhoods instead of negatively affecting just a handful.

Federal buildings farther from transit often use shuttle buses. These could also provide a desirable transit option for neighborhood residents, but security rules often bar them from riding. This has been part of the conversation around the Department of Homeland Security's new offices at the former St. Elizabeth's hospital site between Anacostia and Congress Heights.

Individual buildings can do a lot to help or hurt their neighborhood. The parking garage for the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in Alexandria is lined with townhouses on two sides, but other sides are just screened and set back from the street with landscaping, creating a dead streetscape. Many projects fall into this same pattern, with a mix of successful and unsuccessful components.

Security drives many design decisions and harms communities

The General Services Administration (GSA) is working to reverse damage to the streetscape from its massive headquarters in Foggy Bottom. The building is currently entirely disconnected from the street, but GSA plans to bring retail back to the building's street frontage.

To do this, they had to get creative with a factor that hampers the design of many federal projects, security. Security drives a lot of design decisions for federal projects.

For example, the US Department of Transportation's building in the District's Navy Yard neighborhood takes up two entire city blocks, but has only one retail space along its entire façade, a Starbucks. It brings many workers to the area, but does little for the street.

In urban conditions, security hurts the streetscape by restricting building access from the street and for­bidding retail from lining the outside of buildings. In more suburban conditions it creates large campuses, cut off from what little grid there is and keeping workers from being able to activate the area around them. These large campuses also restrict the ability for planners to attempt to reconnect neighborhoods.

By adapting, many agencies are tackling these issues. The GSA's headquarters was formerly a Level 5 security building. In its renovation, they created a graduated security system, where not all areas of the buildings require the maximum security. As a result, almost all the security bollards around the building could be removed, a marked improvement to pedestrian conditions.

The lower level of security makes street level retail a possibility, and the GSA is looking into opening the building's cafeteria to the public, allowing the agency to share this amenity with their neighborhood.

Sustainability goes beyond LEED

Federal buildings built today have more environmentally-friendly design features. This demonstrates leadership and forward thinking from GSA and the agencies, but Rollin Stanley, Director of Planning for Montgomery County, was careful to remind the audience that the greenest building is the one that already exists, and urged federal designers not get too caught up in LEED.

A LEED Platinum building with no transit options but hundreds of free parking spaces will do more harm to the environment that a building built to lower environmental standards. There are many different factors to take into account to judge a building's true impact on the environment.

Many federal buildings, like many private buildings, are building more parking spots than they need to. Federal agencies are often surprised by how many workers will choose to commute in ways besides driving. At the Mark Center in Alexandria, offices for the Department of Defense were expected to produce massive gridlock. Instead, 50% of workers utilize transit to get to the site.

Little touches can do a lot

With creative designs, federal buildings can often make the most out of restrictions out of their control. The PTO's work in Alexandria requires constant delivery of packages between offices, so the hallways were placed facing the street. This allowed workers to make deliveries by daylight and activate the streetscape. The building could not have retail, but the PTO activated the street in a unique way.

Small-scale gestures have very positive effects on the areas around government offices. The PTO provides Wi-Fi in a small park adjacent to the offices and installed glass columns that light at night. Despite larger urban design failings, small gestures like these can make a big difference in neighborhoods.

Federal projects have their own strengths and weaknesses, but each gains from the collective knowledge of the projects that have come before. Agencies are generally moving towards better designed buildings, closer to transit, that give workers more flexibility. We will surely witness missteps along the way, but the trajectory for these buildings and the positive change they can bring to the areas is promising.

Unlike other states, Virginia does not allow its cities to mandate that developers replace every unit of affordable housing lost to redevelopment, or to require a fixed percentage of affordable units. But affordable housing is a priority for Alexandria, so the City Council and Planning Commission are working together with staff, developers, and residents to find innovative ways to provide it.

Over the course of the next year, the City Council should adopt a new Affordable Housing Master plan. We just completed a plan for senior services that specifically called for new, affordable retirement living options. Soon our public housing authority should complete its own master plan. And the city should finish work on the Beauregard small area plan. All of these will have a significant impact on the future of affordability in Alexandria.

The Beauregard planning study demonstrates the limits of our power. Without a new plan, current rentals, which are barely affordable to people earning under $50,000, would become luxury rentals or townhouses. Thousands of currently affordable units would vanish. The city may be able to gain a small number of units out of these conversions, but it would be limited. We can do better.

The proposed Beauregard plan saves about 700 units of affordable housing. The Council has asked that this number be raised and that we find a way to provide housing to a broader range of incomes, especially those earning under $40,000 per year.

To maximize the number of units saved, the city will need to create a more flexible approach to housing. We need to increase the contributions from developers and use those funds to preserve existing units whenever we can because it is often much less expensive to preserve an existing housing unit than to build a new one. This helps us spread the value further.

We need to ensure that the structure of developer contributions makes it easy to combine with private and non-profit money to build new mixed-income projects over the 30 years it will take for the Beauregard plan to get fully built. Over that time, over $90 million in payments could go towards affordable housing. The scale those funds creates an opportunity to attract other investment.

We need better incentives for developers to create and preserve affordable housing and mixed-use development. The city should look at every new development as a chance to add affordable housing.

Alexandria should update its home ownership and rental assistance programs, to bring them up to date with national best practices. The city should revisit its zoning to allow "granny flats," so that families can rent out affordable spaces in their home and give seniors and others living options. The city should also encourage housing on top of retail strips.

The master plan won't solve all of these issues. There isn't a silver bullet, and no one jurisdiction can solve this problem on its own. Alexandria also needs help from regional partners to build more rental housing. The federal government should also step up. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been too silent on our national rental housing problems for too long.

Alexandria's problems are not unique. Rental rates are consuming more of people's monthly income than can be sustained all over the country. But hopefully, Alexandria's work in the coming months can provide a model for our region and state to follow.

Lower income families feel the effects of this economic shift most, as families making less than 50% of the area median income, about $60,000 in Alexandria, have seen the largest increase in the percentage of their income that they spend on housing. They now pay over 40% of their income on housing. Those earning approximately 30% of the area median, about $40,000 in Alexandria, pay closer to 80% of their income on housing.

While most of the apartment rents in the city, even the affordable ones, are most financially accessible to people earning over $60,000 a year, there are thousands of people paying for these units even though their incomes are much lower. The result is they have little, if any, disposable income to live on.

And, these so-called affordable units are becoming ever more scarce. When property owners repair and fix up their buildings they are able to double rents, driving moderate income workers out of our city and further away, forcing longer commutes on them and more congestion on our region.

Last year, the average value of apartment buildings went up about 15% because a shortage of housing choices and the cost of construction continue to drive up costs. Alexandria gives substantial bonuses to create affordable housing projects. The city waives parking requirements. It allows for extra density. It helps non-profits to get subsidized financing.

But, it is evident that these measures are not enough. The lack of supply and increasing cost of managing or building units render it impossible for non-profits, and for profit organizations, alike, to create an apartment that is reasonably affordable to a person earning under $40,000 a year.

In short, our region isn't keeping up with the demand for rental housing. People want to live near jobs and fewer want long commutes from the far-out suburbs, especially with gas prices at over $4.00 per gallon.

The fact is that these trends are likely to continue. Every regional forecast expects significant growth of millions of residents over the next twenty years. This is economics 101. A good economy and jobs insulate us from some of the worse parts of the national economy. However, all of these factors also put huge pressure on rental prices.

Despite the awards Alexandria has won and the millions of dollars we have spent over the last ten years to preserve a range of affordable housing options, there is no city policy that can stop these rental price trends.

Typically, the most affordable housing in any area are the older apartment buildings. As those are replaced and upgraded, we lose affordable options. Building more rental housing now is the best long-term solution, because it increases supply, and because today's new unit will most likely become more affordable over time.

However, if we are to truly impact the supply and demand problems facing our region, it's going to take more than just Alexandria's participation. We will need the whole of our region to recognize and begin to address the problem.

In the conversation about how to keep rents affordable, some have suggested that the city not fix up public housing, or that it not advance public safety improvements, or that it not allow investment in our parks and other city infrastructure, in order to suppress the value of property.

Although purposely running real estate into the ground and encouraging crime would certainly keep some rents affordable, this is a narrow and dangerous approach that ignores the larger national economic trends behind this.

Furthermore, it is inconsistent with the city's identity, as a place where people from many backgrounds and incomes can live safely and enjoy a good quality of life. Smart urban planning and common sense would say there should be a range of housing options throughout the city, not segregated pockets of low income workers in crime ridden, rundown housing.

While some have complained about the fact that the city is demolishing significant blocks of pubic housing right now, the truth is that every unit of public housing that Alexandria is taking down will be replaced with a newer, higher quality unit of public housing that will provide for a better and safer environment for residents to enjoy.

Alexandria's median income is close to $110,000. And, it's going up as more high skilled, high wage people move into our region. But for recent college grads, blue collar workers, teachers, police, construction workers, cleaners and more, it also means living multiple people to a unit or driving hours each day to work here.

If residents, planners and officials want to preserve, and even improve upon, the diverse, vibrant and accommodating character of Alexandria, they will have to go further and exercise open-mindedness, creativity and flexibility in the coming years. And, Alexandria will need the partnership of the greater Washington region to make a true impact on rent-to-income ratios as the city and metro area continue to expand and evolve.

The regional average of Metro's 86 stations is 72.1. As one would expect, the District of Columbia is the top-scoring jurisdiction, with an average of 81.6. The remainder of the "diamond," Arlington and Alexandria, is a clear second place. Montgomery is in the middle, with Fairfax and Prince George's trailing well behind.

A few Metro stations are right on the borders of jurisdictions: Friendship Heights between DC and Montgomery, and Capitol Heights and Southern Avenue between DC and Prince George's. This analysis counts each toward the score of both jurisdictions.

Nationally, the District and Arlington/Alexandria score favorably. The DC Metro stations by themselves fall just behind Chicago and Boston.

Unfortunately, Fairfax and Prince George's fall to the bottom of the pile. Fairfax's low score is somewhat understandable since it has only 5 stations, most of which serve mainly as park and rides.

But Prince George's has 15 stations, more than any other jurisdiction aside from the District. The county is at a disadvantage because of the placement of many stations. But even so, Prince George's has not committed to transit-oriented development around its stations. It also has a history of allowing development on the fringes of the county to short-circuit demand for offices and retail near Metro.

Fairfax, on the other hand, is working to reinvent Tysons Corner as a walkable urban place around 4 new Metro stops. Interestingly, adding the 5 stops on the Silver Line already under construction would raise Fairfax's average to 61.8.

While Walk Score is not a perfect measure of walkability, the fact that Tysons already has some pretty good scores bodes well for efforts to transform the employment center into a bona fide urban center.

Alexandria is in a period of urbanization, a transformation from largely suburban apartment housing, strip mall shopping centers, and industrial brownfield areas to a series of walkable, mixed-use, transit oriented places. At the same time, the housing stock in much of Alexandria is aging and reaching the end of its useful life.

Now the city is working feverishly, using a rare opportunity when so many developments need to be replaced within a few decades to undo mistakes of the past 40 to 50 years. Simultaneously, the city is riding the Transit Oriented Development wave and filling in formerly industrial brownfield sites while trying to keep traffic impacts to a minimum.

Not everyone welcomes all these changes. Real estate values in walkable neighborhoods are on the rise, a sure sign that demand for such units outstrips supply. Unfortunately, that also means creating new walkable places will often drive housing prices out of the affordable range, even for those making 70 or 80% of Area Median Income (AMI).

But what can be done when a building reaches the end of its useful life? With today's construction costs, even renovating or rebuilding an old building will drive rent prices out of reach for many existing residents.

Deputy City Manager Mark Jinks highlighted one example of this in the Beauregard corridor, where the Encore building saw rent increases of 90% after renovation. Jinks warned that without proper planning, this pattern will be repeated as developers update and replace their aging buildings and look to recoup costs.

With the Beauregard Small Area Plan, Alexandria may have partially solved that problem. Under the proposed plan, as the corridor rebuilds, the 5 developers involved will fund the majority of the creation of 703 dedicated affordable and workforce housing units. The development footprint currently contains over 5,500 total units of housing.

According to the plan, "approximately 44% of the existing units [in the plan area] are market rate affordable units, which constitutes more than 25% of the City's total market affordable housing inventory." Of the current 2515 units of market rate affordable housing, the plan as drafted would ensure that 28% of the existing affordable housing units are retained as dedicated affordable and workforce housing units. Depending on future market rates, additional housing may stay in the affordable range.

The units will be broken down into three levels of affordability, with those making a maximum of 55%, 65%, and 80% of AMI eligible to rent the various units. As is the standard, rents of affordable housing units will be set to a maximum 30% of the AMI tier.

For example from the following chart, 60% of AMI is currently about $58,050 for a three-person household, and rent for a two bedroom apartment is set to a maximum of $1,432 per month and a three bedroom comes in at no more than $1,655. The two bedroom rate is below 30% of their earnings, while the three bedroom comes in slightly above. Of course, those making less than 55% of of AMI are still eligible to rent the units as long as they are tenants in good standing. In some cases, housing vouchers could help lower earning tenants make rent.

Each affordable housing unit will cost the City somewhere in the ballpark of $47,000. Montgomery County recently posed as much as $90,000 per affordable housing unit in a similarly sized affordable housing push. Alexandria's lower share per unit in this plan appears due to the developer picking up a substantial chunk of the cost in exchange for upzoning.

The Beauregard Small Area Plan covers 220 acres, more than three times the 70 acres of the North Potomac Yard Small Area Plan. The planning process was led by a developer-funded consultant working closely with the City and the community over a 2-year planning period.

The study area currently contains development totaling about 6 million square feet. Current zoning allows up to about 10 million square feet, but the plan calls for upzoning to allow 12-million square feet of development. This would include a minimum of 250,000 square feet of retail between a town center area and around a traffic oval dubbed "the ellipse".

As a comparison, the Potomac Yard plan allows up to 7.5 million square feet in approximately one third of the acreage, making the Beauregard plan almost exactly half as dense as the Potomac Yard plan. However, even at half the density of the Potomac Yard plan, this upzoning would bring a very large development proffer.
The developer contribution of $187 million will be augmented by $33 million from tax revenues for an extensive list of community benefits.

The most dramatic changes will be Bus Rapid Transit along the entire corridor, the dedicated affordable housing units, the creation of the "ellipse" traffic oval at the intersection of Seminary and Beauregard Roads, a new fire station, and an expanded street-grid with smaller block sizes. These specific contributions will be in addition to typical developer public benefits such as streetscape enhancement, sewer and utility upgrades, public art, etc.

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route will run the length of the corridor and connect to the Landmark area and Van Dorn Metro. The plan calls for the BRT route to run in a separate right-of-way where possible and includes the possibility of future conversion to streetcars. This BRT line would likely connect to the City's other BRT corridors at Landmark and the Pentagon.

A selling point of the draft plan is that many of the community benefits would be in place by 2020. Alexandria plans to use Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to fund the BRT corridor, the "ellipse" improvements, initial street grid improvements, and Beauregard landscaping.

One common concern with TIF is that if too much of the incremental tax value is obligated to repay the debt service, the area benefited by the TIF ends up without enough tax revenue to cover general city services, which are then essentially paid for by tax revenue from the rest of the City.

Mark Jinks ensured this would not be the case, as the projected demographics of the plan area include fewer school aged kids than in more suburban portions of the City. Since schools are the main cost driver on the list of general City services, the plan area will be relatively low cost.

Despite an additional 2,800 units of housing, additional retail and office space, Alexandria Division Chief of Transportation Planning Sandra Marks stated traffic conditions are expected to improve as the plan area is built out.

The introduction of mixed-use development, a more connected street grid that applies complete streets principles, the BRT corridor, and parking maximums are primary factors that are expected to lead to fewer traffic delays. Parking maximums will be 1.75 spaces per multi-family unit (and 2 spaces per townhouse) before transit is built out, and 1.33 spaces per unit afterwards.

Marks pointed out how little the existing streets and bike and pedestrian facilities connect to those of surrounding neighborhoods. The Beauregard Small Area Plan seeks to remedy that problem, which should distribute traffic more evenly throughout the neighborhood. It also helps that all residential units within the plan area will be within a 5-7 minute walk to a transit stop.

Alexandria will hold a community meeting about the plan on Tuesday, Feb. 21 from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM at John Adams Elementary School. Alexandria is currently accepting comments on the plan through the City website. There is room for revision as the plan is in a draft stage.

One thing is clear. The City of Alexandria plans to gradually increase density into a more urban development pattern over the next few decades. Arguments for and against this change are sure to rage for years to come, but as Jeff Farner said, people are coming, so the City and other regional municipalities must absorb this demand and grow responsibly.

Do we want urban, transit oriented development close to and within the District, or additional exurban sprawl? Alexandria is making it clear that while it plans to manage that growth, it definitely plans to grow.

Former owner Roger Fons bought the then-closed Old Town Theater in 2003 with the intention of opening a live music venue but it quickly became a movie theater once again.

The Old Town Theater was in a thriving and popular part of town, a "date night" area. It was a unique building surrounded by a supportive community. With the right approach, it could have become a destination in its own right.

Instead, it was a mess. The theater was not cleaned well. Posters and lighting units were stored in plain sight. Movies never started on time, leaving patrons crowded in the small lobby or spilling out onto the sidewalk.

One reason the movies never started on time is that Fons couldn't resist a captive audience. When there was a full house, instead of showing coming attractions, Fons would stand in front of the theater and opine about anything that happened to be on his mind. The topics were generally related to the movie industry, but he would sometimes meander into stranger topics such as military conspiracy theories and tips on safe driving.

For years, the theater did not work with online services such as Fandango. The theater's Facebook presence was not consistently maintained, even though it once generated significant activity.

Fons did not recognize the neighborhood demographic and staged movies inappropriate for the old, small theater. Old Town residents are more likely to want to see smaller, arty, independent movies than big Hollywood blockbusters. Non-residents tend to come to Old Town for "date night" trips. Neither of these audiences wanted to see "Twilight" or "The Hangover." Those who do want to see blockbuster movies such as "Transformers" want to see them on the biggest screen possible with the full surround sound experience. The Old Town Theater could never compete on those technical fronts.

But it could have competed on another front. There are very few theaters in Northern Virginia which show independent films. Fons could have carved out a niche into that market. He was told this by many people many times over the years. He said that he tried but that no one came.

New owner Rob Kaufman said he has tried to find and is looking for a tenant who will keep the space a theater. But Kaufman said consultants have told him the space is not financially viable as a theater. Kaufman has also received permission from the Board of Architectural Review to proceed with a plan to demolish the 1940s-era marquee and box office, making the chances of the space reaching 100 years as a movie theater seem very slim. Rumor has it that J. Crew is interested in the space.

Despite the sale of the property and the planned destruction of the marquee, with proper management, marketing and demographic understanding, the Old Town Theater could be a charming gem instead of an ersatz dump.