While the Potomac Yard arena has faced a significant amount of scorn and public scrutiny, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce threw its support behind the arena.
In a release, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce — also called Chamber ALX — said the arena is a positive opportunity for the city.
“As long time supporters of development at Potomac Yard, The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce believes this project is the right choice for the site and will be a catalyst of economic growth in our city for years to come,” the organization said in a release.
The Chamber ALX praised the arena’s economic impact, saying the 30,000 jobs created by the project and 9 million square feet in development would be a boon.
The project has taken a lot of flack for the levels of traffic it would bring to the area, along with concerns about the city’s financial arrangement with Monumental Sports & Entertainment chairman and CEO Ted Leonsis.
Last week, the city showed plans to address concerns about traffic on Route 1 and the Potomac Yard Metro station. The current station, which regional leaders acknowledged cannot handle arena traffic, would see crowding for 60-90 minutes after events, a report said. If the previously announced upgrades manifest, that could go down to 30-45 minutes of crowding.
The full release from the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce is shared below:
In the coming months, Alexandrians have the opportunity to fundamentally shape the future of our city. The announcement of the opportunity for a world class entertainment district at Potomac Yard promises to achieve the goal of maximizing that site.
As long time supporters of development at Potomac Yard, The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce believes this project is the right choice for the site and will be a catalyst of economic growth in our city for years to come.
As noted on the project’s website, the economic and community impact would include 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, 9+ million square foot entertainment district, including new hotels, retail, residential, restaurants, conference, and community gathering spaces, and roughly 2.5 times the economic output of what would otherwise be built based on current development plans.
The Alexandria Chamber and its member businesses cannot ignore the practical impact of this type of investment in our city.
Further, Alexandria needs to attract innovative projects that expand our tax base. A commercial project such as this would broaden the tax base while allowing the city to maximize other sites around the city.
It is important to note the Potomac Yard site was always designed to accommodate 20,000 people per day; while this new vision shifts how those individuals show up it remains the right location for large scale development aligned with the Small Area Plan. In addition, there is language in the Master Plan that envisions an entertainment district as a preferred use for the site.
This monumental opportunity is a reminder to the Commonwealth and the region of what we have long known, our city is a great place to live, work and raise a family. We know there are many important conversations to be had, specifically around the impacts to quality of life, transportation, and underserved populations in our community, and we look forward to participating in those conversations. But the fact remains this project is a once in a generation opportunity that Alexandria should not let pass us by.
We call on the General Assembly to approve the adoption of a Sports and Entertainment Authority, with reasonable legislative oversight, so that Alexandria can get to work on investing in the future of our city.
If Alexandria’s tentative deal to see a sports arena and entertainment district built in north Potomac Yard, it must include a rehabilitation and renovation fund, Mayor Justin Wilson said Monday night.
Wilson told the Alexandria Democratic Committee that the agreement, which is still in its initial planning stages with Monumental Sports, needs a funding source to account for the wear and tear that time and throngs of annual visitors will have on the arena and numerous planned amenities. The renovation fund is included in Alexandria’s deal with Monumental Sports.
Wilson said that no such rehabilitation and renovation fund was included in D.C.’s deal with Monumental Sports when the Capital One Arena in D.C. opened in 1997. He also said that it was no accident that D.C. recently approved a fund to maintain Nationals Park.
“I’ve gotten a lot of emails about a lot of bad sports deals around the country, and I think we have tried to use those as a lesson,” Wilson said. “One of the things that I think we’ve tried to learn really from some sports deals here in this region is first of all, obviously having a long term lease, having relocation provisions that prevent the team from going away.”
Wilson said one of the lessons is not repeating the Capital One Arena mistake.
“What happened in Capital One, which open the year I graduated high school, and I’m not that old, was that there was never any funding source or funding plan for how to renovate and rehabilitate an arena over time,” Wilson said.
On transportation, Wilson said congestion at the arena will be lessened by patrons using thousands of available parking spaces at neighboring Metro station parking lots and arriving via Metro and shuttle buses.
The deal is projected to generate 30,000 jobs in Alexandria, as well as bring in the Monumental Sports headquarters with about 600 professional employees, the arena itself that would house the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, a practice facility, concert venue, television studios, hotels and apartments.
“A big part of the vision is how to use those spaces as a way to get people into the area and then use transit in different ways to get people on to the site for events,” he said. “We’ll have a lot more planning to go as we as we determine whether this use is compatible.”
Wilson also said that one of the advantages of the arena property being owned by the Virginia Stadium Authority is that if the teams decide to relocate at the end of the 40-year lease, the facility would be owned by the city.
“We could knock down and build something else,” Wilson said. “We would have the resources as well as the ownership and control of the property to be able to do what the community would like to do.”
(Updated 6:20 p.m.) After a few years on backburner, plans to remediate and redevelop Vulcan Materials — an industrial site near the Van Dorn Metro station — could be reheating.
An application filed by the Lennar Corporation and Potomac Land Group II LLC with the City of Alexandria calls for the remediation of the existing site to create a new mixed-use development. The new project features a hotel facing S. Van Dorn Street, retail, condominiums, townhouses, two-over-two units and a six-acre park along Backlick Run dedicated to the city.
The development would require a rezoning for the site and multiple development special use permits for the various site parcels.
According to the application:
The project will bring several types of housing to the SAP area and will provide many community benefits including the dedication of a 6-acre park, park improvements, and other transportation-related improvements.
A study attached to the application said the hotel would have 256 rooms. The site would have 204 condominiums, 88 back-to-back multifamily units, and 31 townhomes connected on an internal street network.
Permitting for the infrastructure plan and Backlick Park will go to the Planning Commission for review on April 2.
Plans for Robinson Terminal North, one of the last missing pieces of Alexandria’s aspirations for a contiguous waterfront, are headed to city review next month.
The development, first reported last November, involves a multifamily residential building with ground-floor retail and a restaurant. The project is headed to the Board of Architectural Review on Wednesday, Feb. 21.
A big piece of the Alexandria Waterfront Small Area Plan, approved over a decade ago, was restoring and improving pedestrian access along the river. Robinson Terminal North is one of the only parts of Alexandria’s waterfront that hasn’t been publicly accessible.
The application includes watercolor-looking renderings alongside the typical computer-generated images. The plans call for two main buildings on either side of N. Union Street, along with a smaller circular building at the east end of the site near the water.
The development website said Rooney Properties hoped to have the redevelopment completed by 2025 — an ambitious goal given that the project hasn’t been approved yet.
The application said the portions of the property along the waterfront will have public access with a naturalized shoreline and native planting, though some of the designs also include a pier where a ship can moor.
At a meeting this weekend, Alexandria’s City Council unanimously approved an affordable housing redevelopment for seniors despite pushback from neighbors.
While many projects in Old Town come under fire from neighbors for being too tall, the Ladrey redevelopment is creating a shorter building but one more spread out across 600 N. Fairfax Street.
The Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority has plans to demolish the existing 11-story, 170-unit affordable apartment building at 300 Wythe Street, which houses seniors and residents with disabilities, as well as its former headquarters at 600 N. Fairfax Street. The replacement would be a 270-unit L-shaped building with heights ranging give to seven stories.
Neighbors, primarily from the nearby Annie B. Rose House development for senior residents, shared concerns about the plan, ranging from worries about structural damage to the neighborhood during construction to the move of a bus stop across the street, requiring some of Annie B. Rose House’s residents with disabilities to cross a street to get to their bus.
Residents of the current Ladrey property, though, said their building is in bad shape, which struck a chord with some on the City Council.
“The residents are forced to leave the building on a yearly basis and it’s unfair,” said City Council member Canek Aguirre. “The residents deserve [a new building]. They deserve to have healthy living conditions. They deserve to live without mice and roaches. They deserve air conditioning.”
Mayor Justin Wilson said outreach will need to be done to make the nearby community aware of the bus stop move, but said overall the Ladrey redevelopment is a benefit to the city.
“This is an important project for the city, one that provides not only a rehabilitation and modernization of existing housing but continues our goals of creating additional committed affordable housing and does so for a population that’s some of the most vulnerable in our community,” Wilson said. “I’m pretty excited about this project… We cannot lose the fact that this is a really impactful project for the community.”
Officials planning the $2 billion arena at Potomac Yard say that there will be multiple ways to park around and access the site, from accessing parking garages in nearby Crystal City and at Metro stations, with fans getting carted around in shuttles running up and down Potomac Avenue.
Transportation issues were the most frequently mentioned in a roundtable discussion on Monday with local business owners and representatives at Pork Barrel BBQ in Del Ray. The dozen or so business leaders otherwise expressed support for the project.
“The biggest thing I’m hearing from business owners and residents is the transportation and traffic needs,” Pork Barrel owner Bill Blackburn said. “That seems to be the overriding concern for folks.”
Working hand-in-hand, officials from Monumental Sports and site owner JBG Smith said that data from a transportation impact study will be released in weeks, not months. The 70-acre development is sandwiched between Richmond Highway to the west and the George Washington Memorial Parkway to the east. It is also next door to the brand new Potomac Yard Metro station, which will have to be upgraded to accommodate arena-size traffic.
“We have to make sure that the transportation plan that comes out of this works to make sure that your business is continuing to thrive, whether they’re in Del Ray, or Old Town, or at the arena district or in Crystal City, we want to make sure that everyone sort of understands how this is going to impact them and get all the data,” said Evan Regan-Levine, executive vice president at JBG Smith.
The meeting followed news that an authority to finance the deal was introduced into the Virginia General Assembly on Friday, and that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration outlined $200 million for transportation improvements for the area. Mayor Justin Wilson said last month that the entertainment district will have minimal parking to discourage visitors from driving to the area.
“Who wouldn’t want some of the best athletes in the world visiting Alexandria and eating at my restaurant?” said Jamond Quander, owner of 1799 Prime Steak & Seafood in Old Town. “I think Alexandria is enough of a destination, is well known enough, that events at the new arena won’t hurt, but only improve my business. The question is how are they going to handle the transportation impact?”
Regan-Levine said that there are going to be multiple ways to access the proposed entertainment district.
“Look, there are a lot of different ways you’re gonna be able to access this,” he said. “And some of that might mean parking at something off-site. So, do I park at a Metro garage that’s not used at night and take the Metro a couple of stops in, and whether that’s Eisenhower or Huntington (stations), or also even in National Landing in Crystal City… The idea would be let’s open up and let’s run some shuttle buses down Potomac Avenue so we take some of those cars off the local grid.”
Jordan Silberman, Monumental’s executive vice president and general manager, said that solving the transportation issue is the most important piece in this puzzle.
“We want to make sure that as we invite everybody into, into our building (the arena), that people in the neighborhood feel good about it,” Silberman said. “It’s gonna make sure that we’re enforcing parking across Route 1 and the Mount Vernon neighborhood and Del Rey and making sure that people are not parking here and walking across the street into the neighborhood and affecting people’s lives.”
Monumental Sports wants the first phase of the project to be completed in 2029. According to Monumental:
The proposed sports and entertainment district in Potomac Yard would stimulate growth and job creation in the region through a new campus featuring the global corporate headquarters for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, an industry-leading arena for both the NHL’s Washington Capitals and NBA’s Washington Wizards, a state-of-the-art Monumental Sports Network media studio, a Wizards practice facility, a performing arts venue, and an expanded esports facility, in addition to new retail, restaurants, hotels, housing and community gathering spaces.
Alexandria will conduct a virtual public meeting on transportation and traffic management on Feb. 1.
A Del Ray restaurant is planning on expanding its footprint with a 750-square foot patio addition.
Noe Landini, owner of Junction Bakery & Bistro (1508 Mount Vernon Avenue), wants to build on the northern end of the restaurant on a repurposed area of the parking lot used for outdoor seating the last several years.
Landini is asking the Planning Commission on March 5 to approve his request to increase the restaurant’s floor area ratio.
“Unlike other locations, the sun impacts that particular side of the building, which is the north side, all day,” Landini wrote in his application. “It is extremely uncomfortable and excruciatingly hot for local customers and neighbors in some parts of the spring, summer and fall. A canopy with fans would provide comfort to our guests.”
Landini wrote that the addition will also provide lighting to guests at night.
“(W)e will actually be able to see in the evening, which will enhance our guests’ dinner experience and safety,” Landini wrote.
via City of Alexandria
First National Bank is coming to 704 King Street in Old Town.
The 4,200-square-foot retail building has been vacant since Nando’s Peri-Peri moved from the location last July.
The new bank, which underwent a significant interior renovation over the last year, is also a block away from the new Chase Bank that opened at the corner of King and Washington Streets last month.
The move is part of an FNB expansion from seven to 11 banks in the Northern Virginia and D.C. Metro area by this year, according to a 2023 news release. The Pennsylvania-based bank has been acquiring local banks in order to fill in the gap between D.C. and North Carolina, according to the Washington Business Journal.
An opening date for the new branch has not been announced.
(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.
“Due to the on-going, diminished office market and current high vacancy rate, the Applicant seeks residential use to repurpose the building,” PF III Abingdon LLC said in its application.
The group wants approval to build a new 43,352-square-foot building wing at the south of the property, which is currently occupied by a surface parking lot. They want to increase the 50-foot height limit to 65 feet to accommodate a mechanical penthouse on top of the building, as well as make lobby, courtyard and other aesthetic improvements. The plan also includes seven on-site affordable housing apartments.
The plan will go to the Planning Commission on Tuesday, Feb. 6.
Despite having a high vacancy rate, the applicant said that traffic in the area will diminish.
“The surrounding streets will operate at a less congested state with residential use as compared to office use,” the applicant said. “No new parking will be constructed as the existing parking is sufficient for the proposed number of residential units.”
The proposal joins a trend of local developers converting outdated offices to residential properties, as roughly a quarter of workers in the D.C. Metro area continue working remotely.
Inova Alexandria Hospital is currently a 318-bed community hospital. Once it opens its new hospital in Landmark in 2028, it’ll be a 192-bed hospital.
At a City Council meeting last week, Councilwoman Alyia Gaskins raised concerns from the community about the loss of beds in the new development. Dr. Rina Bansal, president of Inova Alexandria Hospital, said the decrease in beds is part of making services more efficient.
“On the surface, that seems like a reduction in services,” Bansal said.
Bansal said around 30% of patients using inpatient beds shouldn’t be there.
Year over year, we’ve grown in the number of patients we have in the inpatient beds in the hospital. When you have patients in beds in the hospital, there are patients under observation status that are not considered true inpatients, and you have actual inpatients. About 30%… are observation patients; patients who should not be in inpatient beds
Even though the number looks like a decrease, it’s a number based on significant research from a strategic perspective, from a market share perspective, as well as transition of services from inpatient to outpatient.
Bansal said the number of beds is based on projections.
“Our goal as a system is to continue to grow and care for a larger segment of the community,” Bansal said. “We are growing; we are not going to spend over $1 billion to make our footprint smaller in Alexandria.”
Bansal also noted that the Inova Oakville facility will be ready for occupancy next summer and will be open for business in October 2024. Bansal said the groundbreaking for the Landmark development will be in the summer after the Oakville location ribbon-cutting.
