(Updated 10/6) A Hawaiian shave ice trailer at Fort Belvoir is looking to open a new location in Del Ray.
Owner Jaafar Ouardi filed a special use permit to open the new location for Le Petit Ananas Shaved Ice outside Bagel Uprising (2307 Mount Vernon Avenue).
“I am presently the proprietor of Le Petit Ananas Hawaiian Shaved Ice trailer located in Fairfax City, and I have been doing business operations inside Fairfax County as well as the City of Alexandria,” Ouardi wrote. “At present, we offer genuine Hawaiian shaved ice infused with natural flavors, procured exclusively from Hawaii. Our offerings are complemented by fresh toppings such as condensed milk, fruit purees, and mochi.”
Ouardi said the trailer currently operates at Fort Belvoir but he hopes to open an additional trailer at Del Ray. The special use permit indicated the trailer would cooperate with a nearby business for storage, electricity and water as needed.
The permit is heading to the Planning Commission for review on Dec. 5.
Image via Le Petit Ananas Shaved Ice/Facebook
Alexandria staff returned to the Planning Commission one month after Zoning for Housing/Housing for All’s debut, but city leaders remained tepid in their support for the project.
Of note during the work session, however, was a concise breakdown of how Zoning for Housing/Housing for All might affect the city’s housing stock.
The report, delivered by Director of Planning Karl Moritz, said the City of Alexandria currently has around 80,000 units of housing. Moritz said the changes brought about by the zoning changes would create an estimated 2,838 units.
“I regret the precision of a number like that implies,” Moritz said, “because of course these are estimates and based on a number of assumptions.”
Moritz said there are around 50,000 new housing units allowed across the city under approved small area plans, with an anticipated 11,000 that would have been built prior to the approval of Zoning for Housing/Housing for All.
“So that 2,800 is in addition to the 11,000,” Moritz said, “a 25% increase.”
Experts previously told Alexandrians in a panel discussion that the city’s increase in housing supply hasn’t been keeping pace with the demand, leading housing prices to continue to increase.
Planning Commissioners said they’re still “underwhelmed” by the number of units created in the proposal, particularly with only 178 units of additional housing added with the elimination of single-family-only zoning.
“I’m still underwhelmed by the number of units generated in this first phase and I wonder if there’s a way we can add to that as this moves forward,” Commissioner Mindy Lyle said.
Planning Commission Vice Chair Melissa McMahon said, in the future, the city should consider more radical steps like eliminating floor-area ratios (FAR) or parking considerations when it comes to building approval.
“As we talk about more ways to make it cheaper, easier and faster to do housing development, it seems to me that taking us out of the process of deciding how much parking is necessary is a really good idea, if only because it makes it less annoying for everyone developing it,” McMahon said. “That doesn’t mean a single family home won’t have a parking space off-street, it doesn’t mean a townhouse will be built with zero parking instead of a one-car garage, it means there will be options and people developing that unit at that location can decide what’s best for them.”
Moritz said city staff set limits for themselves before Zoning for Housing/Housing for All started, but that those limitations had an unexpectedly large impact on the recommendations.
“Staff did create some parameters around our work: that we would not change FAR, heights or setbacks as part of going into this with the anticipation that creating that boundary would also give us room to make important policy changes without changing what people would see on the ground,” Moritz said. “We learned that things like setbacks and FAR, in particular, is an extraordinary limit and it’s a big factor on why that overall number is low, but changing FAR is a more complicated analysis.”
Planning Commission Chair Nathan Macek said his hope is that moving forward, Zoning for Housing/Housing for All is a first step in the discussion about zoning changes, rather than the end.
“We’re all a little underwhelmed by the numbers we’re seeing… but I do think it’s healthy to look at this not only as one and two phases, but a continual process going forward we revisit continually, not a one-and-done thing in a great to-do now,” Macek said. “It has to be part of our regular routine and something we think about that way.”
Image via Google Maps
Outdoor barbeque spot Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ in Del Ray could be getting a significant expansion — provided it can get the permits next month.
A special use permit heading to the Planning Commission on Tuesday, Oct. 3, details plans for expanded seating, live entertainment and more, though only some of those have staff’s recommendation for approval.
The applicant, Majestic Grill, Inc., is proposing to allow 74 additional outdoor dining seats for a total of 124 seats. The applicant is also hoping to extend hours of operation, permit outdoor live entertainment, and to request approval of a temporary trailer.
The outdoor live entertainment would include live musical performances Wednesday through Saturday from 6-10 p.m.
The staff report recommends approval to the increase in outdoor dining seats, expanded hours of operation, amplified outdoor entertainment, and the temporary trailer — but does not recommend approval for live performances.
The application also includes letters from the public. While some had concerns about a smoker on the site being a nuisance for neighbors, the vast majority of letters were in support of the business, including one from the Del Ray Business Association.
Image via Hi/Fi Tex-Mex BBQ/Facebook
The Alexandria Fire Department wants to replace a 42-year-old burn building used for training in Old Town.
AFD’s proposal to demolish the three-story, 4,600-square-foot building with a new four-story, 6,400-square-foot building goes before the Planning Commission on Tuesday, Oct. 3 and City Council on October 14.
According to the special use permit application:
The building does not have HVAC systems, interior lighting, domestic plumbing, nor a dedicated sprinkler system. Defined as a ‘prop’ by the State of Virginia Department of Fire Programs, the purpose of the structure is to replicate built conditions and spatial arrangements fire fighters encounter in real life, local, fire fighting scenarios. This structure is intended for use solely by supervised training exercises of professional fire fighters and AFD trainees and is closed to the general public…
The frequency of training and the level of disturbance (smoke, sound, visibility) on the surrounding area are not expected to increase in the new facility. The additional fourth story will not host live fire drills and the added height should not incur an increased line of sight to the surrounding area.
Most training sessions are for up to 10 trainees, however there are instances where they can include up to 100 firefighting personnel, according to a special use permit application
AFD reports there have been no complaints from residents or neighboring AlexRenew for more than 40 years.
The Zoning for Housing/Housing for All project turned out to be less of a revolution in Alexandria’s zoning and — for better or worse — more of a gradual evolution.
After extensive build-up and public discussion, Director of Planning Karl Moritz debuted zoning changes to a mixed response from city leaders.
The core gist of Zoning for Housing/Housing for All is a ground-up effort to rework city zoning to be more affordable, accessible and available. While there was praise around the work that went into the project, several city leaders said they were underwhelmed by the project’s scope.
Zoning for Housing/Housing for All touches on some of the same topics as neighboring Arlington’s similar Missing Middle zoning changes, including expanding housing options in single-family zones, but it became clear during the City Council and Planning Commission discussion that existing zoning limitations might blunt the impact of that change.
The staff recommendation is to add the opportunity to construct two to four-unit dwellings in single-family residential zones. The estimated result would be 66 new residential buildings developed over 10 years and 178 total new units.
An optional alternative is a more conservative two-unit dwelling in some zones and three or four multi-unit dwellings in others.
However, what seems like a significant change is watered down by the fact that the additional units would need to exist within the current limits for lot coverage and height as current single-family dwelling units.
According to the presentation:
To preserve neighborhood compatibility, the proposed new residential dwelling types would have to follow the same limitations for lot coverage and height as any new single family dwelling would. Setbacks, lot frontage, floor area ratio and height requirements would be equally applied to any new residential dwellings constructed in a zone.
City staff also recommended moving to no minimum parking requirements for dwellings with up to four units in the enhanced transit areas along Duke Street, Old Town/Del Ray and the West End.
Housing outside of those areas would have a minimum 0.5 parking spaces per unit for dwellings — with a note from Moritz later that the city rounds those half-space requirements up if there’s an odd number of units proposed.
Other changes included replacing the “family” requirement in zoning ordinance with a simple occupancy limit.
Moritz said changes to lot coverage requirements could be addressed later, but that city staff didn’t want to change too many elements of zoning at once.
“We thought it was important to hang on to the overall amount of building that is permitted when taking this particular step,” Moritz said. “In terms of single-family zoning… the size of the container limits what you can have there.”
Moritz said not touching things like setback requirements was a conscious decision by staff.
“There’s no way to fit more units in there in a way we thought the market would adopt,” Moritz said. “We have chosen to limit ourselves to the development envelope that currently exists.”
Multiple City Council and Planning Commission members said that caution was disappointing.
“I’m a tiny bit underwhelmed,” said Planning Commission Vice Chair Melissa McMahon. “That’s not a criticism, it’s more a sense of existential disappointment that the challenges we face are so large… we’re still barely moving the needle. I want to put that on the table because that’s my heartfelt reaction.”
Elsewhere, the report also put a nail in the coffin of plans to add more density and height to more areas of the city. One of the city’s main tools for getting affordable housing units from developers is trading those units for additional height and density allowances.
The city had considered expanding that trade to areas with lower height limits — between 45-50 feet — but ultimately found that other limits like square footage and setback requirements would likely keep that from being utilized.
Unexpectedly, some of the most substantial changes were proposed for Alexandria’s fairly limited number of industrial zones. Moritz pointed to Eisenhower West as an example of an area of industrially zoned buildings with retail, exercise, performance spaces and church uses compatible with housing.
Zoning for Housing/Housing for All aims to turn these industrial zones into areas with better housing and transit options.
“Most of these industrial buildings are built in an anti-urban way,” Moritz explained. “Our proposal is to regulate new industrial buildings in our industrial zones with some urban design criteria.”
Mayor Justin Wilson said the earlier chicken kerfuffle revealed to many on City Council that industrial zoning was fairly laissez-faire about nearly everything except having residential units.
“You can do literally almost anything in industrial zones except sleep there,” Wilson said. “While single-family zoning gets all the attention in this discussion, I imagine other parts of the proposal will be far more productive.”
But these changes for industrial areas only seemed to rub salt in the wound for those disappointed with the conservative changes to single-family zoning.
“By the time we get to single-family zoning, staff are saying the only thing we’re changing are the number of units; we’re not changing any of the things that create those constraints,” McMahon said. “That didn’t resonate very well for me; that in one part of town, we’re talking about freeing up things, making buildings more dense, in another part of town, we’re retaining it all except for the number of units.”
Commissioner David Brown said he understood McMahon’s concerns but said he appreciated the proposal as an incremental change.
“I have a naturally conservative attitude to fixing what isn’t broken,” Brown said. “This is not a radical proposal, and they would tell you maybe it’s not radical enough. My sense is this is an incremental proposal… The work is not done. There’s going to be more to do. Your approach here has been oriented toward the nuts and bolts and I think it will be fairly easy to put together the statutory language to implement this.”
The proposal will go through an extensive public review process over the next few months before ultimately heading back to the City Council for a vote on Nov. 28.
(Updated 12:30 p.m.) The massive WestEnd Alexandria project is taking shape, as the Planning Commission tonight will weigh in on a number of proposals by site development partner Foulger-Pratt.
Nearly half the 52-acre West End Alexandria development is devoted to the Inova at Landmark (the eventual home of Alexandria Hospital), and the rest of the property has been divvied into a multi-block town center. The redevelopment will include new apartment buildings, pavilions, restaurants, rooftop open space and more.
In December, City Council approved Foulger-Pratt’s plan to build three new apartment buildings with 1,117 total units, and tonight’s meeting will focus on the following proposals:
- A development special use permit to build a central plaza (on blocks F and N), a paseo (on block R) and a terrace park (on block P)
- Plans to build two retail/restaurant pavilions with outdoor dining, a playground, seasonal ice-skating rink, and areas for passive recreation
- Plans to extend commercial space and add new rooftop open space to block E
- Plans to modify the layout of the block E residential building by infilling the ground floor courtyard with a one-story commercial space
- Development of 4.4 acres of open space on four blocks, including a tennis/pickleball court, basketball court
The first pavilion, a two-story 4,610-square-foot structure, would be located in a central plaza on block F. The second pavilion, a two-story 978-square-foot building on block N, would include a 270-square-foot seasonal ice-skating shop and a public restroom.
The Planning Commission meeting starts at 7 p.m.
Almost two months after The Art League filed permits for a Slaters Lane studio, that proposal is heading to the Planning Commission next month with city staff’s blessing.
The Art League is a nonprofit dedicated to bringing art to the community. The nonprofit’s offices and art supply shop, along with a few of their classrooms, are located in the Torpedo Factory, but the larger commercial school is located in the Montgomery Center.
The Montgomery Center is slated for redevelopment, meaning the local businesses and the Art Center are forced to find a new home. Fortunately, The Art League isn’t going far, and it could be moving into an old print shop at 800 Slaters Lane.
The building, constructed in 1951, was a laboratory and a warehouse before it became a print shop in 1996. It kept that use until 2021 when Nordic Press vacated the building.
In the Special Use Permit, The Art League Executive Director Suzanne Bethel said the new facility would be a hub for classes from clay animation to silk screening:
At 800 Slaters Lane, the applicant would provide classroom education and workshops in the fine arts and outreach programs for the local community. Students of all ages and skill levels would be offered courses such as drawing, painting, watercolor painting, fiber art, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, photography, jewelry making, clay animation, silk screening, and stained glass.
The application said The Art League has almost 7,000 students per year and hopes to open 17 studios in the building.
The staff analysis supported the new use for the print shop.
“Staff supports the applicant’s request to operate the private commercial school use,” the report said. “This property is an opportunity to keep a revered cultural establishment within the City limits and one proven to harmonize within its surrounding community.”
The staff analysis noted that the studio would also activate a vacant building and maintain a unique educational experience for the immediate and broader community without overwhelming the local street system.
Image via Google Maps
The developer for the massive Samuel Madden redevelopment in Old Town deferred submission of a final site plan this week, after the Board of Architectural Review warned failure over design guidelines.
For one thing, the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority project needs to be designed without vinyl windows, unlike the current design.
“The applicant is proposing to use VPI Vinyl Windows for all windows that are not aluminum storefront,” City staff said in a report. “This means that most windows above the ground floor will be vinyl windows. As shown in the submitted product data, the vinyl windows will have muntins applied to the interior and exterior faces of the glass but will not include spacer bars between the glass.”
ARHA wants to demolish the existing 66 units of public housing in 13 two-story apartment buildings at 899 and 999 N. Henry Street and replace them with two new six-story apartment buildings (75 feet maximum height) containing 532 residential units. Of those, 326 units would be affordable and workforce housing for a period of 40 years, in order for ARHA to qualify for federal tax credits.
City Council and the Planning Commission unanimously approved the development in February, although final site plans still have to go through an approval process. ARHA expects construction to take two years and is also applying for special use permit approvals for a potential restaurant with outdoor dining, an athletic club/fitness studio and a medical care facility.
The property will be home to home to 13,800 square feet of ground floor retail space, as well as a 13,540 square-foot Hopkins House early childhood center and a 500-square-foot Alive! food hub.
BAR Member Nastaran Zandian recommended fiberglass windows and Board Chair James Spencer recommended deferral.
“I don’t think you’re gonna get anyone on this board to sign off on vinyl windows,” Spencer said.
The current public housing units were built for defense workers during World War II in 1945. The 65 families currently living on the properties will be provided temporary housing, their moving expenses will be paid and they will have the option to move back to the property once construction is finished, according to a city staff report.
Board Member Andrew Scott said he likes the project overall.
“In general I think it’s a really nice project,” Scott said. “If it just comes down to the windows and we’re fine with everything else what I will recommend is conditional approval of the project, on the condition that you find another window, and then it puts this decision in the hands of the City Council about how they want to weigh the design guidelines against their other competing priorities.”
City staff also found fault in a proposed cantilevered sunshade on the roof of the gateway building at 999 N. Henry Street.
“This is meant to create a top to the building as a sort of cornice,” city staff wrote. “Staff finds this element to be a distraction to the simple form and notes that since this is on the north elevation of the building, it serves no functional purpose. Staff recommends that the applicant explore brick detailing options to create a terminus to the curved form that is more simple than the proposed sun shade.”
Development plans for the mixed-use development replacing Landmark Mall have been pretty standard so far — commercial tenants on the ground floor, residential and some office above — but a new feature could be a major draw.
The project, confusingly called West End development, is a massive project attached to the construction of a new Inova Hospital campus.
Plans for the site, drawn up by landscape architect Oculus for developer Foulger-Pratt Development, in a Special Use Permit indicate the development could include a seasonal ice skating rink.
Plans show the new rink filling up part of a section of a park, along with a pavilion and public seating — though the application notes that the illustration is “for illustrative purposes only.” The final design and layout of the ice rink is still “to be finalized.”
The project’s website indicated that construction could start on the infrastructure by the end of this year. The developer said last year that vertical construction could start next year and the first buildings could be completed sometime in late 2025.
The Art League is one of several Old Town North tenants being displaced by new development at Montgomery Center (300 Montgomery Street), but a permit filed with the City of Alexandria indicated the arts-focused non-profit could be moving to the former ABC Imaging location at 800 Slaters Lane.
A Special Use Permit has been filed to open new studio spaces in the former printing shop. The Art League also said classes will be held inside the building.
The Art League was founded in 1964 and is a non-profit that promotes arts and art education.
According to the permit:
The Art League provides gallery exhibits and work spaces for artists, offers classroom education and workshops in the fine arts, and provides outreach programs for the local [community]. Students of all ages and skill levels are able to take courses in drawing, painting, watercolor painting, fiber art, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, photography, jewelry making, clay animation, silk screening, stained glass and more. With an enrollment of almost 7,000 students per year, The Art League intends to establish 11 enclosed and 5 open studio spaces for artists and education opportunities in the existing building located at 800 Slaters Lane.
The project is heading to the Planning Commission on Sept. 5.
Image via Google Maps