This week in Alexandria, some long-planned changes around town started to take shape.
The biggest is that the Victory Center’s days may well be numbered, with developer Stonebridge and city staff currently in back-and-forth discussions over whether the building should be entirely demolished or not.
Two months after the City Council authorized changes to what Alexandrians pay to park in Old Town, city staff have come back with new price points for parking.
The aim of the change is to make parking in garages more appealing. Currently, many Old Town garages sit empty while drivers circle blocks looking for on-street parking.
The City of Alexandria is planning to build a new sidewalk on the north side of Polk Avenue, but the city’s plans have some neighbors concerned about the construction’s impact on the nearby park and the neighborhood’s parking situation.
The city is planning to build a new sidewalk that connects two dead-end stretches of sidewalk that cut off abruptly into dense underbrush. The city said the sidewalk construction will help students in the neighborhood walk to Polk Elementary and Hammond Middle School — though students will have to cross the street anyway to get to Polk.
Paying to park your car in Alexandria by phone could be getting more expensive soon.
Alexandria’s City Council voted unanimously on Saturday to enable staff to up the cost of pay-by-phone parking.
Auxiliary housing hasn’t taken off like the City of Alexandria hoped, but city staff are hopeful loosening some restrictions — including parking — could kick the housing type into gear.
The goal is to provide a boost to market-rate affordable housing which has been in freefall in Alexandria for years. While auxiliary housing hasn’t been as widespread as city officials might have hoped, a staff report prepared for an upcoming Planning Commission indicated that city staff are hopeful that eliminating parking requirements for auxiliary housing in “enhanced transit areas” could incentivize more commercial property owners to add residential units.
The City of Alexandria is considering increasing the number of auxiliary dwellings allowed in commercial buildings and nixing the parking requirements for most of them.
One of the biggest behind-the-scenes projects at City Hall has been an effort to make auxiliary dwellings — formerly accessory dwellings, we’ll get into that later — more viable in Alexandria.
(Updated 5 p.m.) Next week, the City Council will review a set of new parking rates (Item 19) for Old Town that aim to push drivers off the street and into the city’s underutilized garages.
The new ordinance would expand the area of Old Town where drivers who don’t have residential or guest permits must pay by phone to park. The current rate in those zones is currently $1.75 per hour, but the new ordinance would allow the Director of Transportation and Environmental Services to set a rate of up to $5 per hour.
The Potomac Greens neighborhood has voted overwhelmingly in favor of new parking restrictions aimed at keeping the residential streets from being overrun by commuters.
The proposed parking district, which would encompass the Potomac Greens neighborhood, is scheduled for review at a City Council meeting (item 17) on Tuesday, June 14.
Two years after plans to convert 116 South Henry Street into an automated parking garage first went to city review, the garage is going to the Board of Architectural Review again on Thursday (May 5) with some changes in mind.
The plan remains to build a 50-foot garage just off King Street, but the entrance is going through something of a redesign after the earlier designs were considered too “monolithic” at earlier hearings.
A Potomac Yard neighborhood could be getting its own residential permit parking district ahead of the opening of the nearby Potomac Yard Metro station.
At a Traffic and Parking Board meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight (Monday), the board will review a staff recommendation that a new parkin district be created in the Potomac Greens neighborhood.
A surface parking lot in Arlandria could be converted into a park and playground for a new affordable housing development in the area.
At a meeting tonight, Alexandria’s City Council is scheduled to vote on an ordinance to sell the property at 3700 Mount Vernon Avenue, a surface parking lot in Arlandria. The property is part of a larger redevelopment project by the Alexandria Housing Development Corporation (AHDC) that will add 475 deeply affordable units and 38,000 square feet of commercial space.
