Alexandria City Council deferred a decision to extend the development special use permit (DSUP) for a seven-story, 180-unit mixed-use apartment building across the street from the Braddock Road Metro station.
The Council, last Saturday, unanimously extended the DSUP for the one-acre project at 727 N. West Street until its public hearing on October 18 (Saturday), giving developer West Street Acquisitions a few months to discuss stormwater issues with the city and conduct more community conversations with neighbors.
Dino Drudi, president of the West Old Town Citizens Association, told the Council that the area is prone to quick flooding.
“That area floods,” Drudi said. “The West Old Town Citizens Association does not believe that it is safe from a public safety standpoint to put all that development and all those additional people into an area that that very rapidly floods, where vehicles, including emergency vehicles, have stalled out because of the flood waters, traffic jams, etcetera.”
Casey Nolan, attorney for West Street Acquisitions, said that his client has installed 650 linear feet of underground sewer piping for the project, as deep as 30 feet underground.
“This work is done, and it benefits the community and the city,” Nolan said.
The project was initially denied by the City Council in March 2021 but was approved two months later. After some delays, including a legal battle with a neighbor citing city regulations prohibiting the Council from reviewing a denied application for a year, as well as a years-long legal battle with Lincoln Lodge #11 to include club space in the plan.
City Council Member John Taylor Chapman stated that West Street Acquisitions should collaborate with city staff to assist businesses relocating to the building in adapting to the flooding.
“If you go down to the bottom of King Street, you’ll see that Starbucks has a lot of sandbags around it,” Chapman said, referring to another area prone to flooding. “I would hope that that’s not kind of the situation with a retail business that wants to come into that (Braddock) space, since we already know there’s a flooding issue there.”
