The Alexandria City Council could be signing a lease tonight for the new ‘West End City Hall‘.
The council is scheduled to review a 10-year lease agreement for the future home of the city’s Department of Community and Human Services at 4850 Mark Center Drive tonight (Tuesday). If approved, the City’s Health Department’s lease for the Redella S. “Del” Pepper Community Resource Center would go into effect on March 1.
A redevelopment vote (item 6) that was meant to be part of the consent calendar — items generally approved without controversy — ended up taking up a large swath of a City Council meeting this Saturday and became the center of a discussion about how hard the city should push for “voluntary” affordable housing contributions.
The topic at hand was the conversion of the non-residential upper floors of 1225 King Street into 12 residential units. There was little contentious in the presented redevelopment plans, but it sparked a discussion of how the city should be handling affordable housing in the increasingly popular residential conversions.
At a City Council meeting last night (Tuesday), Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson unveiled the next stage of plans to ramp up the renaming of streets that honor Confederate leaders, the Washington Post first reported.
While the city has renamed the Alexandria portion of Jefferson Davis Highway and removed the Appomattox statue, streets honoring Confederate leaders like the “Gray Ghost” John Singleton Mosby or Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest still exist around the city.
Alexandria is hoping to get $400,000 from the state to help with resurfacing — particularly for the city’s iconic King Street.
The City Council is set to review a grant application to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s State of Good Repair program.
While flags on private property are mostly unlimited, a new resolution (item 16) heading to the City Council next week outlines some specifics on which flags can fly from city flagpoles.
It’s a topic that can be controversial — in 2015 the city finally prohibited the flying of Confederate flags on city poles.
(Updated at 1 p.m.) The first set of buildings in the West End project — the start of a massive redevelopment of what was Landmark Mall — were approved at a City Council meeting this weekend.
Developer Foulger-Pratt won the unanimous approval of four blocks of the sprawling development, consisting of residential, commercial and medical offices.
Among the many topics covered in the legislative package, Alexandria is sending to the state is a proposal that could make it easier for locals who are not citizens to join the Police Department and Sheriff’s Office.
At a meeting last week, Legislative Director Sarah Taylor told the City Council about a proposal she received from Alexandria’s Sheriff’s Office.
As the City of Alexandria gets ready to kick off its advocacy for the upcoming general assembly session, one of the main talking points is how the city could use more help from the state in handling affordable housing.
Meronne Teklu, speaking on behalf of the Economic Opportunities Commission, the Landlord-Tenant Relations Board and the Alexandria Housing Affordability Advisory Committee, told the City Council this weekend that each of the groups expressed concerns about the rising rate of evictions.
There’s nothing unusual in Alexandria financing an affordable housing project, but one specific request from the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA) could set a notable precedent.
The Samuel Madden redevelopment would replace the 66 affordable housing units with a new mixed-use development featuring around 530 units. Two-thirds of those units would be available at various levels of affordability, while the other third would be available at “market rate” –rents without any affordability baked in.
Alexandria is gunning for authority to run its own health department.
Every year, Alexandria sends representatives to Richmond to plead its case to the General Assembly. With the city under the yoke of the Dillon Rule — which says that local government can only exercise powers expressly granted by the state — often times those legislative priorities focus on areas where the city wants a little more wiggle room.
(Updated 11:30 a.m.) As Alexandria sizes up Duke Street for dedicated bus lanes, a regional grant aimed at reducing congestion and improving air quality could be a vital piece of funding the transit line’s operation.
The bus lanes, part of a bus rapid transit (BRT) refit, is part of the Duke Street in Motion project, which aims to boost transit accessibility along Duke Street.
