It’s not as exciting as the Washington Wizards and Capitals, but Amazon Fresh in the Potomac Yard Shopping Center is still moving forward.
The Washington Business Journal first reported that Amazon is gearing up to open at 3801 Richmond Highway.
A peek through a window at the former Shoppers Food Warehouse reveals a large grocery store with empty shelves and counters. A Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control license application is also posted on the front door showing that the retail giant applied in February to sell gourmet wine and beer.
The Washington Business Journal also found recent permit applications for the installation of refrigeration cases.
Property owner JBG Smith lists the property as a “Future Grocer.” As a policy, Amazon does not comment on its “future store roadmap.”
Amazon Fresh closed earlier this month in Crystal City, ARLnow reported. The store was open for less than two years. The company also abandoned plans to open locations in Columbia Pike and Bailey’s Crossroads after a fourth quarter earnings call in February put a halt to expansion plans.
The Shoppers in Potomac Yard closed at the end of 2019 and Amazon Fresh was announced to go into the space in 2021. It’s located in the northern section of Potomac Yard near the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus and less than two miles from Amazon’s HQ2 development in Crystal City.
T.J. Maxx is planning on moving to a sectioned-off portion of the former Shoppers Food Warehouse in Potomac Yard next month.
T.J. Maxx staff told ALXnow that the store will move from its current location at 3451 Richmond Highway and reopen at 3875 Richmond Highway on Thursday, Oct. 19.
The former Shoppers closed in 2020 and until recently was expected to be transformed into an Amazon Fresh.
Now with those plans scrapped, T.J. Maxx will take up more than half of the 50,000 square foot former grocery store, which was divided into two properties (3875 and 3801 Richmond Highway).
“The sign is up and we’re moving,” a T.J. Maxx employee said. “We’re reopening on Oct. 19. It’s very exciting, after being here all these years.”
Potomac Yard is managed by JBG Smith Properties and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which are both overseeing a massive mixed-use development of the area.
A new acquisition will preserve some affordable housing in Alexandria’s Arlandria/Chirilagua neighborhood for nearly 100 years. Wesley Housing has acquired the six-building Parc Square Apartments buildings.
Wesley Housing will now make immediate safety repairs, with a long-term plan to redevelop the property. The 1940s-era properties were acquired after Wesley Housing got a $2.3 million grant from the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, and conditionally will reman affordable for at least 99 years.
Wesley Housing will likely start construction on the major phase of redevelopment in 2025.
Amazon’s HQ2 has raise concerns in the area of gentrification, and the purchase establishes the path for a multi-phased redevelopment plan. The $2 billion Amazon Housing Equity Fund is intended to create and preserve upward of 20,000 affordable housing units in Arlington, Alexandria, and in Washington State’s Puget Sound region — three areas experiencing Amazon’s growth.
“Committing these units to long-term affordability and making critical repairs will greatly benefit existing residents and the community at large,” said Wesley Housing Vice President of Real Estate Development Kamilah McAfee. “Our ultimate goals are to reduce the economic burden of housing in this community, improve the quality of living for residents, contribute to income diversification, and attract private and public investment to generate economic opportunities and access to desirable amenities and services.”
As a condition of Amazon funding, the 66 units will remain affordable for at least 99 years.
“We are so pleased to be a part of the solution by addressing the affordable housing shortage,” said Catherine Buell, Director of the Amazon Housing Equity Fund. “By teaming up with organizations such as Wesley Housing, we are able to help grow the housing stock for moderate- to low-income households as well as support our communities of color whose diverse contributions help make Northern Virginia such a wonderful place to live, work, and thrive.”
Alexandria is currently experiencing an affordable housing crisis, and lost 90% of its affordable housing stock between 2000 and 2017. Consequently, the city has pledged to produce or develop thousands of units to meet 2030 regional housing goal set by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.Â
This is an exciting announcement by @WesleyHousing which will maintain affordability and improve quality of life for residents in partnership with @amazon & @CommunityLdgngs
Our brand new Arlandria-Chirilagua Plan will expand affordability in future.https://t.co/H0Mzhqicrt
— Justin Wilson (@justindotnet) January 18, 2022
Via Wesley Housing
Mayoral candidates engage in public forum — “Alexandria’s mayoral candidates gathered in a virtual forum on Saturday, kicking into high gear to get their message out ahead of the Nov. 2 general election.” [Alexandria Times]
Amazon backs grant program to spur affordable development near D.C.-area transit — “Amazon will fund a new grant program to help local governments and nonprofit developers pursue affordable projects near transit stations, directing $500,000 of its recently announced $2 billion Housing Equity Fund to this effort.” [Washington Business Journal]
Local group plans Four Mile Run clean-up — “Join us Sat., Oct. 23 for cleanup at Four Mile Run Park from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. to celebrate the Clean Virginia Waterways and Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup.” [Twitter]
Alexandria kid goes viral for love of fire department — “Alotta yuck these days… Please enjoy the delight of my three year old spotting a fire truck. @AlexandriaVAFD, meet your biggest fan!” [Twitter]
D.C. didn’t ask Northam and Hogan to help crack down on ticket scofflaws, despite initial claims it did — “D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser never reached out to the governors of Virginia and Maryland to negotiate reciprocity for automated traffic camera tickets, despite a District government report — signed by the mayor and submitted to the D.C. Council last week — saying that said she did.” [DCist]
What a week in Alexandria. Here’s the rundown.
Our top story this week is about Ricardo Roberts, a District B candidate for the Alexandria School Board. Roberts, who intends to sue the school system, wants cameras in classrooms and “examples” made of unruly kids.
On Tuesday, Governor Ralph Northam joined dignitaries in Alexandria for the groundbreaking of the first of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus buildings. Virginia Tech plans on opening the first of three academic buildings in 2024, paving the way for a tech-centric campus next door to Amazon’s HQ2 development in Crystal City.
Also on Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to extend the state of emergency to January 31, 2022.
On Thursday, parts of the city were flooded during a brief thunderstorm. Thanks to Kerrin Nishimura for sending us flooding photos of the Braddock area.
In this week’s poll, we asked about a potential Metro line crossing over to National Harbor. Of the nearly 700 responses, 62% of respondents think it’s a great idea, 23% need to hear more about it, and 15% think it’s a bad idea.
Important stories
- Police dispatched three times for fighting at Alexandria City Public Schools in less than a month
- ACPS laying the groundwork for in-school vaccination
- 20 health experts are writing in the Del Ray Wellness District’s new blog
- Eisenhower Partnership hosting Oktoberfest to support local urban planning scholarship
- Police: Old Town bank robbery suspect spent two years in jail for robbing another bank
- No injuries after shots fired at cars and apartments in Landmark area
- New Old Town townhouses headed to architectural review process
- Update: Missing Alexandria toddlers returned home to their mother
- Alexandria Police report double-digit rise in burglary and drunk driving arrests
- As selection deadline nears, Alexandria wants community input on incoming city manager
- Visit Alexandria attracting Black visitors with new ‘Drop-in’ campaign
Top stories
- Alexandria School Board candidate wants cameras in classrooms and ‘examples’ made of misbehaving kids
- West End trail project derailed by stalled development
- With high hopes and small class sizes, The Linder Academy opens in Old Town
- Alexandria City Council to likely extend state of emergency to next year
- Poll: What do you think of Metro’s proposed Blue Line crossing to National Harbor?
- Multiple violent charges dropped against Fairfax County man held without bond for assaulting police during arrest
- Landmark redevelopment’s community management up for review at City Council tonight
- Alexandria seeking state-funding to make fare-free buses long-term
- West End apartment complex looks to replace parking with barking
- BREAKING: Video shows brawl at Alexandria City High School cafeteria just two days after school starts
- Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus breaks ground in Potomac Yard
Have a safe weekend!
Amazon’s Sword of Damocles is hanging over Arlandria, and city staff have been working with local residents and community leaders to put together a plan to help preserve the local community against gentrification.
Arlandria, also known as Chirilagua, is a primarily Latino community in northern Alexandria with refugees from El Salvador and other parts of Central America.
The community is one of the city’s few bastions of market rate affordable housing — housing affordable to those making less than the area median income that isn’t part of a committed affordable housing program. But it’s a community that is also less than a mile from the rapidly-transforming Potomac Yard and just down the road from Amazon’s “HQ2” in Crystal City.
City staff are scheduled to discuss a first draft of the Arlandria-Chirilagua Plan at the Thursday, Sept. 9, Planning Commission meeting. In a memo, Director of Planning and Zoning Karl Moritz outlined what the plan’s goals are:
- Preserve Arlandria-Chirilagua as a culturally diverse neighborhood; protect residents’ ability to remain in the community amidst anticipated market pressures by preserving and expanding housing affordability and opportunity;
- Support the existing commercial corridor and local businesses;
- Build on neighborhood walkability, safety, and transportation options;
- Connect and expand the open space network with more play areas and outdoor living rooms; and
- Empower residents to advocate for their needs and participate in decisions affecting their neighborhood.
Moritz said the plan is to address preservation of Arlington-Chirilagua on several topics, from housing affordability to community safety and mobility. The plan is scheduled for release later this month for review throughout September and October. The final draft plan will be released in mid-October with public hearings throughout November.
What an unexpectedly busy summer week in Alexandria. Here’s the rundown.
Our top story was on an Alexandria woman who claims she was roofied at a restaurant on the waterfront on the evening of July 9. A police report has been filed, and no charges have been made.
This week we sat down with acting Police Chief Don Hayes, who said that he’s thrown his hat in the ring with City Manager Mark Jinks to keep the top job. Hayes, a 40-year veteran of the Alexandria Police Department took over after the sudden departure of Chief Michael Brown last month, and will have to contend against candidates in a national search.
The Tokyo Olympics also start this week, and the games will include three T.C. Williams High School graduates — sprinter Noah Lyles, high-jumper Tynita Butts-Townsend and boxer Troy Isley. In fact, Lyles just had a comic book biography published in the Washington Post. If you’re a fan of the Olympic games, check out this list of local restaurants celebrating with special events and meals.
Important stories
- Pot enthusiasts quiet in early days of legalization in Alexandria
- Alexandria sees 90 COVID cases in July, another death
- Local historians profile former slave in Alexandria who struggled to rescue his family
- Alexandria man caught with gun at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport checkpoint
- New Potomac Yard luxury condo community sells 30% of properties before construction starts
- Testing for Alexandria’s controversial stream restoration work starts next week
- Two years after massive flooding, city moves forward with Holmes Run trail restoration
- Del Ray licensed family counselor completely booked since launching in May
- Alexandria businesses advised to sharpen e-commerce as consumer patterns evolve
- Alexandria swimming pools operating with reduced hours, residents signing waitlists with capacity overload
- Without annual music festival, Del Ray is celebrating with a bar crawl
- Del Ray affordable housing completes long-awaited overhaul
Top stories
- Woman claims she was roofied at Old Town restaurant
- Residents protest against conditions at West End apartment complex
- Developers eye Beauregard redevelopment with West End upgrades on the horizon
- Former chef at ‘The Alexandrian’ opening new restaurant in Arlandria on Monday
- No injuries after shots fired in Braddock area on Wednesday
- DASH takes lessons from D.C., Baltimore and Oregon in eliminating bus fares
- ‘Call Your Mother Deli’ signs lease in Old Town
- After last month’s Democratic primary, Republican Darryl Nirenberg tops campaign donation leaderboard
- New city health improvement plan aims to fix inequities
- Poll: Have you been to the Winkler Botanical Preserve?
- Lee-Fendall House to throw speakeasy party to finance building repairs
Have a safe weekend!
A new luxury condominium community in Potomac Yard has reportedly sold 30% of its properties — without any of its 138 units yet built.
The FORTIS Companies of Washington, D.C. owns the Dylan property, and is selling one-to-three bedroom condos for between $600,000 and $1.2 million. The condos have been designed by Lessard Design International of Vienna and Akseizer Design Group in Alexandria, and will be built next year. In the meantime, interested buyers can see a fully-sized model at their sales gallery at 2316 Richmond Highway.
Over the next several years, Potomac Yard will completely transform into a bustling commercial district home to a new Metro station, the massive Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, and a revamped shopping center — all next door to Amazon’s HQ2 development in Crystal City.
The new Dylan development will be located adjacent to Potomac Yard Park.
“As we anticipated, the excitement around Amazon’s HQ2 and Virginia Tech is generating strong interest in Dylan,” said FORTIS Vice President Matt Bunch. “Dylan’s convenient, walkable location is a big draw. It is just a five-minute walk to the new Potomac Yard Metro Station opening early next year, which will connect residents to Regan National Airport just one stop away. Residents also will have walkable access to a variety of new shops, restaurants, employment centers, and recreational options within Potomac Yard and on Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus.”
Bunch continued, “We recognize that many residents will appreciate the option of working from home, so we ensured that 80 percent of Dylan’s plans include generously sized dens or home offices. Dylan also will feature an onsite business center for those residents who want to meet clients, take calls privately, or just get some work done outside of their homes.”
Courtesy The FORTIS CompaniesÂ
The pandemic changed how consumers shop, and with the development of Amazon HQ2, Alexandria is evolving from a government town to a tech town.
That’s according to a presentation to the Del Ray Business Association this week by Kevin Fenton, founder of The Walla Design Company.
“We’re basically evolving from being known as a government company town to now pivoting to be looked at as a tech, innovative place to set up a business,” Fenton said. “It doesn’t make brick and mortar experiences insignificant. It does, however, mean that your brick and mortar experience needs to be extraordinary in order to maximize the value of the trip that your audience is taking.”
The bottom line, Fenton said, is that local businesses will need to focus their offerings online and create unforgettable experience at their brick and mortars, which will see a reduction in foot traffic in the years to come.
Amazon will start construction in 2022 and open in 2025 in Arlington, and the move will means even more younger consumers making more money living in the area. Millennials already make up 43% of residents in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, according to the 2019 U.S. Census Community Survey, which Fenton sourced in his report.
Fenton said that online grocery shopping, home nesting and virtual health care will continue to grow in popularity.
“The big takeaway here is that COVID required us as consumers to overnight — I mean quite literally overnight — to reconsider our value systems and our attitudes about consumer safety and self preservation,” he said. “Our spending habits changed very, very quickly. What we were spending our money on also changed.”
Courtesy Amazon
Residents of the Chirilagua/Arlandria neighborhood been besieged over the last year.
As a largely Latino community disproportionately impacted by job loss during the pandemic, local residents have pushed back against rent payments. But even as Alexandria starts to pull out of the pandemic with an eye toward job recovery, the city is working through efforts to build a plan to save Chirilagua — less than a mile from Potomac Yard and Crystal City — from the gentrifying effects of Amazon.
“Many Arlandria residents have been candid in expressing fears about displacement and gentrification, anxiety over losing their community and the culture of their neighborhood over time,” said City housing planner Tamara Jovovic in a public forum earlier this week. “Addressing this will require an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
Jovovic said Chirilagua already faces a misalignment in housing needs and rent availability, with local families spending too much on rent and utilities. She said the city’s goal is to create housing affordable to individuals and families at roughly 40% of area median income (AMI). For individuals or small households, that ranges from $36,000 to $60,000 per year.
The city has started working on facilitating public-private partnerships to push for affordable housing development in the area, with Jovovic saying the city is looking at how to turn city-owned areas like a parking lot on Mount Vernon avenue into use for affordable housing.
“The deeper the level of affordability of units, the greater number of tools needed,” Jovovic said.
One of the questions raised by residents in the forum was whether the city would expand height and density restrictions. City staff said the plan is not to increase those restrictions, and that developers wanting expanded height or density will consequently be required to offer a maximum number of affordable housing units.
“We’re moving forward with the same heights,” said Jose Ayala, a city planner. “[W]e want to make sure anything proposed in neighborhood related to an increase in heights is related to affordable housing.”
Late last year, the city codified a long-standing trade in Alexandria development: You can get more height and density than is typically allowed in an area, but only if you add affordable housing proportional to that expansion.
“Development applications could request through [Development Special Use Permit], that’s an optional zoning tool,” Jovovic said. “[They can request] up to 25 feet of additional height in exchange for one-third of density associated as affordable housing
Jack Browand, division chief of Parks and Cultural Activities, said other feedback the city has received so far highlights the need for the city to make better use of parks as meeting spaces.
“Community feedback emphasized the need for social areas and to increase park facilities,” Browand said. “Including having picnic areas and established grilling locations. We don’t have a lot of public restrooms throughout, so [that means] being able to extend outdoor experience by having public restrooms for the public.”
Jovovic emphasized the importance of getting a plan into place before the area starts to feel the effects of Amazon.
“While affordable home ownership may not seem like a pressing need now, the plan will be recommending we expand home ownership training and counseling to make it geographically to make it more accessible and linguistically,” Jovovic said.
The plan is scheduled to go to the Planning Commission and City Council late this fall or in early winter.
