What a busy week in Alexandria.
This week’s top story was all about money, with a $1 million Powerball ticket getting sold in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County.
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apartment building
A 14-building apartment complex next door to the former Landmark Mall property recently sold for $225 million, the Washington Business Journal first reported.
The City’s Office of Real Estate Assessments confirmed the March 28 sale and the amount, which have not yet been posted online.
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(Updated 5:25 p.m.) The owner of an aging office building in Old Town North wants it converted into a 136-unit apartment building, and credits the decision to the “ongoing and diminished office market and current high vacancy rate.”
The five-story, 112,000-square-foot office building was built in 1983. It’s owned by Principal Life Insurance Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, and managed by PF III Abingdon LLC, an affiliate of the D.C.-based real estate investment firm the Pinkard Group.
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From protests over evictions to outrage over living conditions, complaints at the Southern Towers Apartment complex in Alexandria’s West End have become somewhat commonplace over the last few years.
The aging five-building complex is home to an estimated 7,000 people living in about 2,000 workforce apartments. One maintenance worker told ALXnow that he fixes at least two riser leaks per month on the property, the most recent of which affected 14 apartments in The Sherwood building last month.
A lawsuit filed by D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb over alleged artificial rent inflation will hit some of the region’s biggest landlords, including companies with properties in Alexandria, DCist first reported.
Schwalb’s lawsuit alleges the landlords of acting as a rent-setting cartel that use Texas-based property management software company RealPage to artificially drive up rent prices around the region.
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The Alexandria Planning Commission unanimously endorsed a sweeping overhaul of the city’s zoning ordinances on Wednesday night, giving City Council the green light to vote on it later this month.
There were more than 100 attendees and 51 speakers at the Planning Commission’s five hour public hearing, which ran after midnight. The speakers were a mixed bunch, with about half supporting the legislation and the other half opposing it.
Alexandria renting units in Class A apartments — newer, high-rise buildings — have seen their rent increase by an average of 4.7% over the last year, real estate website UrbanTurf reported.
Those Class A units comprise the majority of new construction around the region and are generally developments built after 1991 and featuring amenities. The effective rent per month in one of those units in Alexandria, which includes a mix of studios, one and two-bedroom rentals, is $2,475 per month.
A makeover has been proposed for a 53-year-old office building in Old Town North.
The owners of the former home of the Alexandria Community Services Board at 720 North St. Asaph Street want the building converted into a 12-unit multifamily apartment building with ground floor commercial space.
City leaders broke ground on Housing Alexandria‘s 474-unit affordable apartment complex in Arlandria on Wednesday, capping off the largest project of its kind in Alexandria history.
It will be 2026 by the time residents start moving into the two-building, 36,000 square-foot complex, Housing Alexandria said in a release. The buildings, named Sansé and Naja, will be located near the corner of W. Glebe Road and Mount Vernon Avenue. The property will include a large underground parking garage and 34,000 square feet of commercial space, which will include childcare and health care services, according to Housing Alexandria.
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(Updated at 4 p.m. on Oct. 18) For at least five weeks, Loren DePina and her family will be forced live in a one-bedroom apartment until flooding damage in her three-bedroom Southern Towers apartment is fixed.
DePina’s and 13 other apartments at Southern Towers’ Sherwood building (5001 Seminary Road) were significantly damaged early Sunday morning by a water leak that worked its way from the eighth floor of the 15-story building all the way to the first floor. Video of the damage showed residents wading through inches of water in apartments and hallways and flooded elevators.
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It’s becoming increasingly common in Alexandria to live alone.
A new study from the investment firm SmartAsset examined census data from 2016 to 2021 and found, in a study of 342 U.S. cities, Alexandria has the second most growth in people living alone. The number one spot — discrepancy about calling it a city aside — goes to neighboring Arlington.