Alexandria’s City Hall and Market Square (301 King Street) are on track for renovation, and the city government wants to loosen zoning restrictions around the project.
At its public hearing on Saturday (March 15), the City Council will discuss a round of changes to Alexandria’s zoning ordinance that would “increase regulatory flexibility” for the City Hall renovation project, according to a staff memo.
According to the memo:
In this round of updates, staff propose changes to implement the City’s One Start initiative, to allow additional flexibility to accommodate planned City Hall renovations, to allow small-scale additions to existing buildings without site plan approval, and to allow taller fences between residential and non-residential properties.
In the meantime, the public has until March 23 to complete a survey on draft concepts. The city wants construction to start in 2026 and wrap in 2028.
The proposed changes include the expansion of public city-owned buildings by bypassing the required special use permit (SUP) approval process for developers and property owners.
“Staff’s proposed change would eliminate the need for a redundant SUP process to renovate City Hall,” city staff said in the memo. “Even without the SUP requirement, additions to public buildings, at a minimum, would still require Planning Commission review and… receive Council endorsement through the budget approval process. The SUP requirement is not necessary for the City to be responsive to community input on its own projects.”
The staff also wants to increase the allowable height for public buildings from 50 to 75 feet and the permitted floor area ratio (FAR) from 1.5 to 2.5.
“Portions of the building are over 100 feet tall,” staff said. “Increasing the allowable height to 75 feet would accommodate planned renovations that would allow for expansion of the building’s upper stories but would not allow for additional stories to be constructed.”
The package also includes the following zoning changes:
- Increasing the allowable height of fences between homes that abut commercial businesses from six feet to 10 feet
- No site plan approval from the city for additions/expansions of less than 3,000 gross square feet to existing buildings
- As part of the “One Start” initiative, the duty of reviewing and approving site plans will be shifted from the city’s Director of Transportation and Environmental Services to the Director to Planning and Zoning
City staff said that transferring signature authority to DPZ will “reduce staff overhead associated with internal routing across departments,” according to the memo.
The Planning Commission unanimously supported the proposal on March 5.
