As the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership works through programs aimed at helping to strengthen the city’s business communities post-Covid, some in the organization and partnering groups are working to ensure there’s a greater diversity of voices in the new order.

A new grant program, the ALX B2B Business Association Grant Program, aims to help prop up business associations across the city to make them more active and helpful for their communities. The city-funded grant program is in the process of distributing $535,000 in grant funding across eight associations.

AEDP Economic Recovery Manager Senay Gebremedhin and Kevin Harris, former City Council candidate and head of the new Alexandria Minority Business Association, said the goal of the grant program is in part to use the pandemic recovery to help address issues around diversity that predate and were exacerbated by Covid.

Gebremedhin said AEDP’s goal is to use the funding as a boost to business associations to get them to a place where they can be healthy and independently sustainable long-term, without relying on backing from pandemic recovery funding to provide higher levels of service.

“When we built out the program, we intentionally built out sustainability as a core purpose,” Gebremedhin said. “The funding was short-term, so applicants had an understanding that they needed to continue services beyond the funding period.”

The grant funding is going to eight different organizations, ranging from established groups like the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce to brand new organizations like Harris’ Alexandria Minority Business Association.

• Alexandria Chamber of Commerce
• Alexandria Minority Business Association, Inc.
• Del Ray Business Association
• Eisenhower Avenue Public-Private Partnership
• Old Town Business Association
• Old Town North Alliance
• Social Responsibility Group
• West End Business Association (WEBA)

Many of the organizations have been volunteer-led, and Gebremedhin said in the past they’ve struggled to sustain initiatives without proper funding or infrastructure support. Even among the more established organizations, Gebremedhin said nearly all of them have seen leadership turnover in recent years.

While the program distributes funding to regional associations like the Del Ray Business Association, the new Social Responsibility Group and the Alexandria Minority Business Association target specific issues within the sphere of local economic development. Gebremedhin said the Social Responsibility Group works with AEDP on communications with local business incubators.

“One of the priorities for our group is creating peer relationships,” Gebremedhin said. “The Social Responsibility Group has a much broader agenda, but our work is narrowly focused with them on one of the pillars of their agency… incubators and building resources for emerging businesses in Alexandria.”

According to Harris, not all businesses have been able to participate in influential policy discussions between the city and the business community. He said he hopes the Alexandria Minority Business Association gives new minority voices a similar chance to weigh in.

“When things are rolled out, there is some communication with other business associations to weigh in on how things are rolled out,” Harris said. “There is a need for that in the minority community.”

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The City of Alexandria is still mulling over what to do with the Torpedo Factory, but one way of paying for the expensive additions could lie in a program started under FDR.

At a meeting of the Waterfront Commission, representatives from the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP) outlined one potential path to financing the Torpedo Factory overhaul as part of a “public real estate entity.”

Christina Mindrup, VP for commercial real estate at AEDP, said the partnership has been considering the creation of a new public real estate entity that could help “unlock new financial resources” to assist with arts development in Old Town North, some of which has been stalled and fallen behind the pace of attached developments.

Mindrup said that AEDP is working with the city to assess whether this public real estate entity could absorb the Torpedo Factory.

“AEDP working with city manager office to evaluate whether [Torpedo Factory Art Center] building could be included with assets financially managed by public real estate entity in Old Town North,” Mindrup said. “We’re now exploring options for expanding role of the real estate entity to include governance of TFAC.”

The topic of TFAC changing governance has been a touchy one, but Mindrup said the change could open up a new source of funding in the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) of Alexandria. The low range of cost estimates, essentially the “do-nothing” build with only the most basic of needed repairs and improvements, is still estimated at $16 million. Cost estimates for more substantial improvements range up to $41.5 million.

“For those who don’t know, the Industrial Development Authority has been around forever,” Mindrup said. “It’s been around back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was used to help jurisdictions rebuild and put investment in the area.”

Specifically, Mindrup said the IDA can issue tax-exempt bonds to borrow at lower interest rates to fund improvements. It’s a program already in use at other developments, such as the hospital development at not-Landmark Mall.

“This would become a financing tool to help us fund improvements towards the Torpedo Factory,” Mindrup said. “It’s really just a low-interest loan that’s a tool for non-profits.”

AEDP leadership emphasized that the program is just one of several tools being considered, but AEDP President and CEO Stephanie Landrum said one benefit is it could be a revenue source outside of the already strained city budget.

“[We were] asked , as the city is looking at particular governance models, some of which might create a nonprofit or ownership of building not by the city, what models are available to finance improvements,” Landrum said. “There is a cost for improvements that needs to be made that is large and we do not have the money to pay for it. The only way we’ve been looking for that money is traditional CIP or city budget.”

Landrum said AEDP is examining changes to funding that could be made under a different governance model.

“We’re looking at: if the government model changed, could IDA funding be made available?” Landrum said.

Local labor representatives have come out in force against potential city funding in the development of the Hotel Heron in Old Town.

A proposal spearheaded by the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP) would have the city take some of the tax revenue generated by the Hotel Heron project at 699 Prince Street to pay the project’s bond trustees.

Interior demolition was already underway when the pandemic scared off hotel investment, but an AEDP report indicates that with the city’s loss of hotels over the last few years there isn’t enough of a local market to meet the potential tourism demands if and when that rebounds. A report from AEDP to the City Council said the investment was low risk because the only city money put into the project would be taxes generated from the hotel.

During initial City Council discussions earlier this month, city leaders seemed amenable to the project, although wanted to see progressive standards set and compensation adequate enough for laborers and hotel workers to afford to live in Alexandria. A project presentation also boasted that it would create 19 full-time jobs and 90 part-time jobs.

In the days since the meeting, organizers from various labor groups around Alexandria told ALXnow they expect city involvement in financing the project to come with stronger guarantees of fair pay and treatment of employees.

“The Council should oppose this project,” said Bert Bayou, Director of African Communities Together. “As an organizer of African immigrants in Alexandria, I believe that this money should help keep people in their homes. Creating bad jobs does the opposite, exacerbating the housing crisis and leading to further poverty and hardship.”

The push for higher wages comes after more than a year of protests against evictions following job loss during the pandemic.

“Living in Alexandria is expensive — even if you are making decent wages,” said Southern Towers tenant and organizer Sami Bourma. “If the Council approves this project, they should be ashamed of themselves. They should be standing up for workers like me and creating jobs that help us, not a bunch of part-time jobs that families can’t survive on.”

“Approving this project would be an insult to Alexandria workers,” said Sam Epps, Political Director of UNITE HERE Local 25. “How can the Council justify using taxpayer dollars to subsidize a project that creates just nineteen full-time jobs? Workers coming out of this brutal pandemic deserve better.”

Stephanie Landrum, president and CEO of AEDP, said the project will not only be a sorely needed revenue boost for Alexandria, it will also be a showpiece historic renovation. The building was previously the Hotel George Mason at the entrance to Old Town.

“Tourism is a vital part of Alexandria’s economy,” Landrum said. “Supporting the renovation of a historically significant building at such a prominent location in our historic district today and positioning ourselves to meet and even grow hotel demand as it rebounds is an important tactic in Alexandria’s pandemic recovery. This project also has returned the building to the City’s real estate tax rolls for the first time in at least a generation. The previous office tenant was a nonprofit with a federally-granted tax exemption.”

Landrum said the project was first approved several years ago and demolition started in March 2020, but the developers approached AEDP for help with a funding shortfall caused by the pandemic. The proposed city’s financing also takes up a relatively small portion of the project’s overall cost, so an increase in pay for staff would require the developer to secure funding elsewhere — a prospect that seems unlikely given the need to turn to the city for help in the first place.

“Those challenges continue, which means that any increase in cost, increases the gap needed to be closed by an equal amount,” Landrum said. “Without identifying additional capital or resources, substantive cost changes make the project not feasible.”

Landrum also said the hotelier was chosen as a partner in part because of their paid benefits to employees, wage transparency, opportunities for growth, and their other pro-worker policies already in place.

In regard to public funds being used for the project, Landrum said there’s no city policy in place that requires labor agreements when public funds are used.

“The Council will be discussing this as they consider their own construction and investment projects, as they do not currently require labor agreements, and we would expect that once a policy is in place for the City, it logically will extend to projects they chose to financially participate in,” Landrum said.

Landrum also said AEDP worked with city staff and the developer along previously established city requirements and changing those last-minute as the project comes forward could put it in jeopardy. The explanation is a little complicated, so it’s presented in full below:

For the Hotel Heron project, AEDP, the City staff, and the developer engaged with the state and negotiated this deal according to the terms and requirements that are currently in place. Meaningfully changing a policy for an approved and welcomed project has created a challenging situation that has put the viability of the project in peril. Our role is to explain the impacts of these changes, advocate for the approval of this great project on its merits and work with our elected leaders to set new policies that are clear for new projects moving forward.

To your question about feasibility, labor requirements, prevailing wages, collective bargaining agreements all have implications on a project’s bottom line, so any business or developer needs to understand those costs at a project’s inception to be able to adequately budget for them.

Ultimately, there are no provisions at the state or local level that require labor agreements to qualify for this incentive program. Under Virginia law, the City does not have the power to set its own prevailing wage, but we do support efforts to create one at the state level, as outlined in the City’s legislative agenda for the upcoming year. The conversation about including this requirement is under discussion because we are considering public investment- as explained above, and discussed with recent projects like Landmark Mall, staff’s role is to provide information about the feasibility of making changes, and to outline any costs or implications those changes might have on the project, so that Council can make informed policy and project decisions.

If the City Council wishes to make labor agreements a condition of our participation in this state incentive program, it is up to council members to follow the usual decision-making process to hear from City stakeholders, debate the pros and cons of that decision, and adopt and communicate any resulting requirements. And, of course we would follow applicable laws, regulations, and requirements when pursuing projects, as we currently do.

Alyia Gaskins was the City Council member who first raised questions about fair compensation for employees during the City Council discussion and said she hasn’t fully decided how she will vote but treatment of workers on the project will play a role in her vote.

Since my first Council meeting, I have raised issues from wage theft to worker protections to how economic development benefits small businesses. Unions are about more than wages and benefits they are also about working conditions and the right to have discussions about issues that impact you. The reason I am so focused on preserving the rights of workers is because I believe they are in the best position to articulate what is fair compensation. I don’t presuppose my judgment on these cases so I cannot answer the question about how it will impact my vote. We have time before Saturday. I look forward to working with the developer to find a solution. Ultimately, we have to get to a point when we have greater predictability for all in the development process.

Project zoning and the city’s financing role are scheduled for a vote at the City Council meeting tomorrow, Saturday.

Alexandria’s City Council was overall supportive of an arrangement presented earlier this week to invest — sort of — in a new Old Town hotel.

A proposal backed by the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership would have the city help fill gap-funding for a hotel project at 699 Prince Street that fell through when the pandemic hit. Interior demolition was already underway when the pandemic made it impossible to secure financing on a new hospitality project, said AEDP President and CEO Stephanie Landrum in a presentation to the City Council on Tuesday.

Landrum said the city’s hospitality industry has plummeted over the last couple years and in some cases it’s more beneficial to convert those properties to residential, here Landrum said the city’s economy would benefit more from a luxury hotel.

“We’re seeing what we could classify as obsolete hotels, dated in terms of their age or their amenity base isn’t what travelers want today, or their location isn’t amenity approximate,” Landrum said. “We’ve decided as a city that [hotel conversion] is helping achieve priorities like housing availability, but we need a good mix of commercial projects in the city to balance the tax base. while we continue to improve or encourage hotel conversions in some places, have to encourage hotels to be built in viable locations.”

Landrum said a hotel at 699 Prince Street would generate 500% more revenue to the city than a residential project and require little social or infrastructure uses, with no burden placed on schools and little pressure on park use.

“The cost of people who reside in a hotel is much less than residents,” Landrum said.

The site was once the Hotel George Mason, built in the 1920s but was later converted to offices and served as headquarters for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Landrum said the financing structure being proposed limits the risk involved for the city. The city, through AEDP, would pay bond trustees out of a 1% cut of the sales and use tax generated by the hotel after the project is complete and begins to generate revenue. The project is estimated to generate roughly $2 million annually in revenue, which Landrum said was a “significant amount of money” for the city to come from one project.

“We are agreeing to support this project, but if this is unsuccessful that debt has no bearing on the city, it’s all on that project,” Landrum said.

But Landrum said while she expects AEDP will likely get “phone calls” from other potential hotel developments if the project is approved, Landrum warned that the circumstances around the city’s involvement with this project were relatively unique.

“This project unique in historic preservation, in size and scale,” Landrum said. “I don’t think a new hotel being built for long-term stay in the West End or to service the new Virginia Tech campus in Potomac Yard will have the same set of circumstances. The number one provision is that you have to prove you have a gap you can’t close.”

The City Council approved first reading of the proposal, which is scheduled for a public hearing at the Saturday, Jan. 22 City Council meeting.

The main concern expressed by the City Council was over the handling of labor on the project. City Council member Alyia Gaskins asked about creating project labor agreements and other progressive labor arrangements for the hotel development, but Landrum said the profit margin is already so slim it’s unlikely the project would be able to support that.

“This project came to us because of a gap in financing,” Landrum said. “A lot of the things you’re talking about unfortunately comes at an additional cost. We’ve talked a little about this… we understand how real and impactful those additions are. For a project of this scale to enact some of those things would make the project not feasible. [We’re] talking about a 20-25% increase in cost for some of the labor concessions.”

The project presentation boasted that the project would bring in 19 full-time jobs and 90 part-time jobs, but City Council members expressed uncertainty at whether those employees would be paid a wage that would allow them to live in Alexandria.

“I really like the model for this, where what we put into this is based on what we’re getting out of it in terms of revenue,” City Council member Kirk McPike said. “We’re not talking about a dime of city money going forward without coming to us from this project… [but] without paying levels where they could live in Alexandria, we’re not benefitting Alexandria workers.”

Staff agreed to come back at the Jan 22 public hearing with more information about wages for employees at the hotel.

“There are things that as good human beings, citizens, and representatives we want to do but we also need to get projects done for the greater good of the community and what is the cost-benefit of some of these decisions,” Landrum said. “We try to thread that needle right now when there isn’t a clear policy at the council level and brought forward a project we think is obviously a great community good.”

It will take three-to-five years for Alexandria to economically work its way out of the pandemic, according to the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP).

That’s according to a recently released Alexandria State Of The Market 2021 Mid-year Report, in which AEDP outlined business trends and impacts.

“The hardest-hit industries continue to be tourism, restaurants, and retail, and the use of office buildings and mass transit, and attendance at live entertainment venues remain low,” the report said. “The onset of COVID-19 in 2020 not only created new trends but also accelerated those that were already underway and hastened the demise of others. That said, it is expected cities will bounce back in three to five years, largely due to the appeal and vitality of entertainment, finance, technology, and education.”

AEDP President and CEO Stephanie Landrum says that business owners have been through the worst days of the pandemic.

“We made temporary things permanent, like the closure of streets, the ability for businesses to use sidewalks,” Landrum said. “The things that we were scrambling to do last year when these first surges happened, we’ve learned how to do all of them and we’ve made them all permanent. We’re in a much better place as a community and as businesses to get through this next surge.”

AEDP has distributed millions in Back To Business grants to businesses all over the city, and has been a hub for relief-related information. The nonprofit has also been central to bringing major business development to the city, including Amazon’s HQ2 and the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus.

“I don’t think anyone was prepared for the level of uncertainty and the length of this pandemic,” Landrum said.

The city has experienced a dramatic drop-off in hotel occupancy and revenues. Mayor Justin Wilson noted in a social media post that hotel revenue fell from $1.1 million in July 2019 to around $200,000 in July 2020, and Landrum believes that hotels emptied by the pandemic could be converted into affordable housing.

More people are also working from home, and the city’s office vacancy rate increased to 15.9% (as of June 2021) over 13.1% in 2020.

The report outlined the following rising trends:

• Telework
• Suburban Migration
• Safety/Health Concerns for Indoor Public Spaces
• Affordable Housing Crisis
• Demand for Public Open Space
• Retail Sector Transformation
• Concerns about Racial Equity
• Federal Deficit
• Use of Bikes and Scooters
• Worker Shortages

The report outlined these slowing trends:

• Appeal of Cities and Density
• In-Person Meetings/ Conferences/Business Travel
• Experiential Retail
• Growth of Health/Wellness Establishments
• Tourist-Oriented Retail/Leisure Travel/Tourism ö Mass Transit Use
• Apartment Amenity Wars
• Live Entertainment/Movie Theaters

Retail investments may never fully return to pre-pandemic performance, the report said.

“Typical storefront retail will lose value as customer foot traffic counts decline over an increasing preference toward online purchases and home deliveries,” the report said. “Consumers may forever shift to e-commerce shopping for most apparel, food, and household items.”

This week, the City Council is docketed (items 27 and 28) to review a proposal for the city to, in a round-about way, be involved in the financing of a new luxury hotel in Old Town.

With hotel revenue going into freefall during the pandemic, the prospect of building or renovating hotels in Alexandria hasn’t been a particularly financially appealing option, but a report prepared by Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP) and city staff said that’s going to be a hit to tourism in the city as people travel again.

At the City Council meeting tomorrow (Tuesday), the Council is scheduled to vote on a “tourism development plan” developed with the Virginia Tourism Development Financing Program (TDFP) to provide gap financing for a hotel project at 699 Prince Street.

The project is coming to the city for financing because the project is below the anticipated yield investors would hope for. According to the tourism development plan being presented to the City Council, the anticipated operating profits for the hotel are between 6.5% and 7% — below the 10% yield targeted by investors for financing before the pandemic. According to the report:

The project’s $69.6 [million] (includes building sale) ancipated cost will be capitalized with approximately $45.2M (65% loan-to-cost) senior construction financing, and approximately $10.27 million of net historic tax credit proceeds. The remaining $14.13 million will be funded through a combination of TDFP proceeds and investor capital.

It’s a somewhat complicated chain of financing, but a graph in the presentation lays out some of the financing web.

The tourism development plan laid out to Council also highlighted some of the issues with hotel room supply city-wide. One of the big issues, the plan said, is that residential units are seen as a safer bet than hotels. The report noted that the city has lost five hotels in the last two years.

“The major challenge for Alexandria’s tourism economy is our recent reduction in hotel room supply,” the plan said.”The loss of hotel rooms is largely a result of the booming residential real estate market. With low-interest rates and increasing post-Covid migration from urban centers to suburban communities, the demand for residential housing in Northern Virginia is causing many hotel property owners to convert their properties to residential. As a result of these conversions, Alexandria’s hotel base dropped 17% in the past two years.”

The report also said while there are “upscale properties” in the city, there are no real luxury hotels in Alexandria.

“This proposed development would fill a void in the market and in turn, increase City revenues by increasing our Average Daily Rate,” the report said.

The report also said the new hotel would provide large meeting spaces that are in short supply in Old Town.

Finally, Alexandria would benefit from more hotel meeting space in Old Town. Our largest conference hotel, the Hilton Mark Center, is located on the City’s West End, a 20-minute drive from Old Town. Within Old Town, Alexandria has only three properties that can accommodate a large meeting (200+) — the Westin, the Hilton Old Town and Holiday Inn & Suites. Despite the walkable and historic downtown that many meeting planners and their attendees are seeking, Alexandria loses mid-size meetings to adjacent localities like Arlington, VA and National Harbor, MD.

The report from AEDP and city staff, though, said the expectation is for the hospitality market to rebound this year and next — how the ongoing wave of Covid cases from the omicron variant affects those projections isn’t said.

“In the recent HVS market study, the tables indicate demand for higher-end hospitality that will surpass pre-Covid levels in 2022-2023 and point to continued growth thereafter,” the report said. “Targeted for delivery in the 2023 timeframe, the Project will be well-positioned to capture this demand.”

At the meeting on Tuesday, the City Council will vote both on creating a “tourism zone” at the site to incentivize hotel development and, immediately after, a tourism development plan for the proposed hotel.

(Updated 3:15 p.m.) As part of an ongoing mission to help boost the city’s economic recovery, a Virginia program being administered locally by the Alexandria/Arlington Regional Workforce Council offer to match signing bonuses for small, local businesses currently hiring new employees.

Liz Bolton, interim director of marketing and communications for the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, said the grants are available to any business with fewer than 100 employees in Arlington or Alexandria. The grant program provides matching grants of $500 to create a $1,000 bonus for the new W-2 employees who are paid $15 per hour or more.

The bonus is applicable for any employee hired after May 31 up to a maximum of 25 new hires.

“Employer must match the full amount and provide funds directly to new hires,” the program website said. “This can be in either one lump sum or in installments to cover the ongoing costs of childcare, transportation, or other barriers to re-employment. Verification of how funds are used by the new hire is not required.”

Arlington and Alexandria employers can apply for the grants online.

Alexandria will spend millions on emergency financial support programs, stormwater repair, childcare and dozens of other projects as part of its first portion of American Rescue Plan Act funding.

“Now the really hard work begins,” Mayor Justin Wilson said after Council’s unanimous passage of a plan Tuesday night. “I think this is an opportunity to make some transformational investments.”

The City received its first $29.8 million on May 17, and has to spend the total $59.6 million in funding by Dec. 31, 2024. Alexandria is getting substantial funding by being counted as both a city and county — along with 41 other cities across the country — and will get its second allotment in May 2022.

Federal funds will not directly go to individual businesses, but some are allocated toward the funding of business districts for trial street closures, ABC-licensed special events and public access parklets.

“Our thought was that direct assistance for businesses was best provided, and continues to be provided, through the federal government at scale,” Alexandria Economic Development Partnership CEO Stephanie Landrum told Council. “We are much better equipped as a community, and certainly as an economic development group to reach a wider swath of businesses than we ever have been. And so part of our challenge and responsibility is to make sure all of those businesses know about other programs not being provided by the city.”

The 30 projects include:

• $4 million for an Alexandria Community Access and Emergency Support program to determine which city services are eligible for residents, including emergency financial aid, rent assistance and child care
• $3.7 million in stormwater repairs at the Hoofs Run Culvert
• $3 million for a Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot, which will give $500 in gift cards to 150 poor families for 24 months
• $2.8 million for a Unified Early Childhood Workforce Stabilization Initiative to “support hundreds of childcare providers and early childhood educators, provide a safe and healthy learning environment for thousands of children, and help parents, especially women, get back to work.”
• $2.5 million for food security to ensure two years of continual free food distributions at hubs throughout the city
• $2 million for Alexandria Housing Development Corporation flex space to expand city services for the Arlandria neighborhood
• $1.9 million in flash flooding spot improvements throughout the city
• $1.1 million to scale up a workforce development pilot
• $800,000 to make permanent the closure of the 100 block of King Street
• $620,000 to fund the Out of School Time Program to help with learning loss associated with the pandemic
• $560,000 to the Alexandria Economic Development Authority fund commercial business districts for trial street closures, ABC-licensed special events and public access parklets
• $500,000 for Visit Alexandria marketing efforts
• $295,000 to fund two new Office of Historic Alexandria tourism experiences on the city’s history with civil rights and and the Duke Street Corridor
• $253,000 to increase services for LGBTQ and BIPOC communities

Alexandria is planning on spending a portion of its American Rescue Plan Act funding on supporting a childcare wellness program, commercial business districts around the city, flooding mitigation and hiring bilingual city staffers to help residents facing eviction.

Those are just four of nine prioritized recommendations that the Alexandria City Council received Wednesday night on how to spend its first tranche of funding. After getting more than 1,300 recommendations from the community, spending has been categorized into tiers, with projects scored by staff. The Tier 1 and 2 projects would be handled with the first allocation, followed by the Tiers 3 and 4 with the second.

“This is a fast-moving but very, very significant effort that the City has been undertaking the last several months,” said Mayor Justin Wilson, who tweeted the list of prioritized projects.

The U.S. Treasury transferred $29.8 million to the City on May 17, according to a staff presentation. Alexandria was approved for $59.6 million, and got double ARPA funding after being recognized as both a city and a county. There are 37 independent cities in the U.S., and 34 of them are in Virginia. The extra designation for cities to receive dual funding resulted in more than $450 million additional funds distributed around the country.

The exact cost of the projects is not listed. Instead, they are accompanied by dollar signs — one $ indicating little expense and $$$$ being very expensive. The list includes “shovel-ready” projects.

“I know, it looks a little bit like how you choose which restaurant to go to, but as I said many of them are scalable,” said Dana Wedeles, special assistant to the city manager.

The Out of School Time Program would employs vendors or teachers for project-based and social/emotional learning programs.

“These enrichments will assist with learning loss and will increase academic and social supports to vulnerable children in addition to traditional recreational activities that maintain physical and mental health and wellness,” the staff report said. “The programs will be held at five locations across the City in FY2022 and FY2023. Children considered most vulnerable will be provided with financial assistance funds to attend OSTP programs free of charge.”

The Alexandria Economic Development Partnership is also planning to provide matching grants to a number of existing business organizations that represent geographic areas in the city, including the Old Town Business Association, Del Ray Business Association, West End Business Association, the Eisenhower Partnership and “any group that would form in the Arlandria area,” said AEDP CEO Stephanie Landrum.

“The idea is that each group could potentially qualify, depending on how much money ended up being allocated, for $50,000 to $100,000 twice,” Landrum said. “Over the course of two years… they would start to do things that would prove their value, and would eventually then allow for those groups to exist more on membership or voluntary contributions… It’s also a recognition that many of these groups do rely on membership dues, and a lot of businesses have struggled to pay those membership dues.”

Funded projects in those business districts include trial street closures, and coordinated design services for commercial and public access parklets. It could also mean more Virginia ABC-licensed special events.

Additionally, Vice Mayor Elizabeth Bennett-Parker said that support for the hospitality industry needs to be moved up from a Tier 3 project to Tier 1.

“I would support moving that up,” she said. “I think we need that sooner rather than later.”

Staff also prioritized the maintenance of existing stream channels with debris removal.

“Specific projects include Four Mile Run Control sediment removal/maintenance and Holmes Run Stream and Channel maintenance,” staff wrote in the recommendation.

The city is limited in how can spend the money.

“As stated in the law, there are several uses for this ARPA funding,” Wedeles Said. “The first is to respond to the public health emergency and its negative impacts; The second is to respond to workers performing essential work during the COVID-19 public health emergency by providing premium pay to eligible workers; Third is for the provision of government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue due to the COVID-19 public health emergency relative to revenues collected in the most recent full fiscal year prior to the emergency; and then fourth is to make necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.”

The second allotment will be transferred next year, and the spending deadline for the first chunk is December 31, 2024. Additionally, the Alexandria City Public Schools system has also received its own allocation of $35,407,000.

City Council will make its final decision in July.

The parties are over. Council is back at work.

Tonight Council will be reviewing the concepts proposed by community input for allocation of the first tranche of our American Rescue Plan funding.

An incredible opportunity for our City to make generational investments. pic.twitter.com/87bztU1eOS

— Justin Wilson (@justindotnet) June 9, 2021

Alexandria has gotten knocked down, but is looking to get back up again in 2021.

In a report outlining the city’s response to the dire fiscal impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (ADEP) outlined the allocation of grant funding to businesses in the city. Beneath lingering concerns about the years it will likely take to return businesses to a pre-pandemic levels of vitality, the report outlined some of the major new tenants and changes coming to the city in the next year or two.

AEDP’s optimism for these new economic boosts for the city is also twinged with a touch of uncertainty for what the future of the city’s office usage looks like.

Potomac and North Old Town

One of the biggest changes is the new Institute for Defense Analyses Headquarters under construction at 730 E. Glebe Road near the Potomac Yard Metro station. The building will be a 370,000-square-foot office space, relocating the offices from the Mark Center in the West End to a larger, more accessible site.

“It’s one of the things that’s visible as you come into Potomac Yard,” said Stephanie Landrum, CEO of AEDP. “The other two office buildings were delivered over the course of the last year behind it and behind that is the Metro. The cluster of those things is starting to visibly tell the story of what Potomac Yard is morphing into.”

Landrum said Potomac Yard epitomizes the kind of living, breathing change that’s part of living in a growing city.

A little to the south, Landrum said there is a similar transformation taking place in Old Town North.

“In Old Town North, where there’s a pretty significant cluster of activity,” Landrum said. “We’re starting to see this really cool mix of reimagined buildings, like conversion of the Crowne Plaza and 801 N. Fairfax — where chamber of commerce used to be — and conversion of American Physical Therapy building; and that sort of investment combined with brand new — like Gables, The Muse, and the bus barn construction.”

Unlike Potomac Yard, where much of the old commercial space is being demolished to make way for the newer development, Landrum said development in North Old Town requires a more subtle touch.

“With Old Town North, it’s not plowing everything and starting over,” Landrum said. “It’s a patchwork of redoing existing and building new stuff. [When it’s finished] you will see architecture from the 1940s and from the 2020s. It’s a cool and interesting story.”

West End

In the West End, the belle of the development ball has been Landmark Mall, where Inova is slated to anchor a large new mixed-use development with a relocation and expansion of its Alexandria hospital.

“All West end residents want is a central gathering place, a town center,” said Landrum. “Now, at Landmark, they will be able to replicate the same successful mix of uses [as Potomac]. What’s awesome about Landmark is having an economic driver in the hospital. There will be doctor’s offices and other health-related spin-off businesses that want to be in proximity.”

But Potomac Yard and Old Town are boosted by Metro accessibility that helps to make them regional destinations. Landmark doesn’t have that level of transit accessibility today, though development may benefit from the area’s close proximity to I-395.

Landrum said the city is currently working through plans of boosting transit accessibility to Landmark, though convincing Metro riders to hop from the train onto a bus is often a difficult prospect.

“The city is adding alternative modes of transportation,” Landrum said. “For bus rapid transit (BRT), there’s one in Potomac Yard that is still in its beginning stages of ridership. Before the pandemic, we started to see positive momentum there. For the West End, we’re hoping for a similar line to connect Van Dorn Metro to the Pentagon Metro. What we’re trying to do is provide people with as many options as possible.”

One of the advantages of the hospital is that it gives the surrounding developments what might cynically be called a captive audience.

“Honestly, that’s why landing Inova was critical,” Landrum said. “It’s a thing people figure out how to go to if they need to.” Read More