Alexandria’s annual budget process wrapped up this week with a $839.2 million fiscal year 2023 budget approval and special tax relief for car owners.
Meanwhile, an uptick in opioid overdoses among children has Alexandria City Public Schools considering adding Narcan to schools and city officials issuing warnings about counterfeit Percocet.
The city of Alexandria is getting ready to drop $102 million to fix flooding along the waterfront.
A proposal by the Waterfront Commission’s Flood Mitigation Committee, pitched to the Waterfront Commission at their April 19 meeting, outlined the potential pump stations, underground stormwater detention chambers, and streetscape and other stormwater infrastructure improvements for the ongoing efforts to implement the Waterfront Small Area Plan.
While Gen Z has decided, correctly, that Alexandria is superior to D.C., at least one local attraction is headed to the further shore for much of this year.
The Tall Ship Providence is planning to move to The Wharf for the “2022 cruise season” while construction is ongoing at the Senator John Warner Maritime Heritage Center in Old Town.
Almost exactly four years after archeologists recovered three 18th-century ships from under the Old Town Waterfront, Alexandria is planning on sending at least two of them back to Davy Jones’ Locker.
Three ships were discovered under the Robinson Landing construction site in March 2018. While the most intact of the trio was sent to Texas A&M for study and will get a new Torpedo Factory exhibit next month, the other two have sat in water tanks in the DASH bus barn. At a meeting of the Waterfront Commission, City Archaeologist Eleanor Breen said that sometime this year the city will start moving the ships out of their 12×24-foot tanks and out to Ben Brenman Pond (4800 Brenman Park Drive).
The new kitschy “I Love You” public art installation at Waterfront Park (1 Prince Street) is scheduled to be unveiled on March 25.
The new installation by Miami artists Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt features illuminated neon pink lights spelling out “I Love You” mounted on a 15-foot high display and will “bathe visitors in a soft pink hue,” a press release from the city described with an unusual touch of sensuality. The color scheme had earlier been described by Office of the Arts Director Diane Ruggiero as “Pepto-Bismol pink.”
A stretch of the waterfront could be getting new permanent railings after being stuck with unsightly temporary fencing for years.
The area of the waterfront at 1 Pioneer Mill Way, where BARCA Pier & Wine Bar is, could be getting a new permanent railing.
Alexandria could be converting another block of King Street to a pedestrian-only zone this spring.
At a meeting of the Waterfront Commission earlier this week, city staff presented both plans for a pilot to close the waterfront end of King Street and examined the future of the 100 block of King Street, which has been permanently closed and converted into a pedestrian zone.
Alexandria is hoping to cut back on the noise nuisance from leafblowers and street buskers.
At a Waterfront Commission meeting last week, city staff discussed changes made to the noise code in December.
The Torpedo Factory plan took a direct hit from the Waterfront Commission as Commissioners criticized staff for a rushed timeline that gives little room for public and commission feedback.
Plans are in the works to potentially overhaul the structure of the Torpedo Factory, with options like new cafe space on the first floor or artistic changes like a new glassblowing studio all being considered. But at a Waterfront Commission meeting earlier this week, the group unanimously voted to sent a letter to the City Council warning about the inadequate time given to considering public feedback at the end of the process.
After sailing through perilous economic waters, the Tall Ship Providence just shored up weekly tours until next spring.
The nonprofit is still tabulating the numbers, but expects that since launching in June 2020, thousands of visitors have been welcomed aboard the Tall Ship for tours and cruises. The Providence is a replica of the first naval warship commissioned by the Continental Congress in 1775, and visitors are welcomed aboard by an actor portraying Captain John Paul Jones.
(Updated 5 p.m.) Alexandria has a long history of beer, from Port City to prohibition, and a new excavation on the waterfront is sifting through one of the city’s older breweries.
City archeologists are currently at work at the Roberdeau’s Wharf/Harborside site (400 South Union Street), where they recently found a brick furnace and a coal bin associated with the circa 1830s brewery, according to the Alexandria Archaeology Museum’s Twitter account.
