By Bill Rossello
Those patient enough to read through the nearly 250 pages of the draft Duke Street Land Use Plan may be reminded of the once popular game SimCity, where players had fun building an imaginary municipality. Undoubtedly, city staff enjoyed building this plan, but it promises existing residents little in the way of economic or quality-of-life benefits.
It used to be that cities crafted major redevelopment plans with something big in mind. There would be a major company headquarters, a concert hall, an entertainment district or even a major shopping center. This plan appears to include none of that. Seemingly, the plan includes just more apartments – lots of them – along with some retail establishments and amenities to serve the new residents.
That doesn’t mean that the city’s largest redevelopment plan since Potomac Yard won’t be big. The plan covers a four-mile long swath of the city, from the far West End to the edge of Old Town, seeking to create 12 distinct neighborhoods. In the plan’s graphical depictions, there appear to be more than 40 new residential developments identified in the category of “potential development.” The overwhelming majority of the potential developments have height targets equivalent to eight stories, and some are even taller.
Most are listed as “Residential/Commercial,” likely indicating an apartment building with some ground-floor or nearby retail establishments. The sheer number implies the addition of several thousand more rental units with perhaps some condos and townhouses mixed in. At a citywide average of two people per household, the number of new residents along the corridor would be substantial.
The plan devotes just two short paragraphs to the horrendous traffic problem which current residents along the corridor consider their number one quality-of-life issue. The root cause is the confluence of resident and nonresident traffic on the cut-through corridor from the Telegraph Road Beltway exit north to Duke Street, west to Quaker Lane and north to I-395.
City staff’s proposed solution is to develop as much of that area as possible between Wheeler Avenue and Telegraph Road, with potentially nearly 20 new residential developments. Several of them would be built on the site of the Alexandria Commons shopping center currently anchored by Giant Food.
Their logic is to add so much density as to bring traffic on Duke Street and Quaker Lane to a crawl, “ultimately reinforcing the regional highway system as the preferred route for regional travel,” as they articulated in the plan. What they mean is nonresidents will be so discouraged that they would only use the Beltway and I-395 to commute from Maryland and southern Fairfax County to points north of Alexandria. Unlikely.
But what about those nonresidents who work here in our hospital, schools, city departments and West End businesses? Their commutes will likely go from frustrating to impossible. Or how about parents and students of our local private schools?
And, of course, how about the nearby residents who use those very same routes to run to the grocery store, visit Old Town or access the beltway at Telegraph Road – you know, for their own “regional travel.” City staff chose to punt on their valid concerns rather than address them.
It seems that the plan’s real focus is adding affordable housing for people who mostly don’t live here today. Seemingly, it would transform Duke Street from a critical arterial road into a much more densely populated city street running slowly through isolated and impenetrable neighborhoods, ones as difficult to leave as they are to enter.
If this plan is adopted and implemented as is, there will be no solution to arguably one of the worst traffic choke points in the city. Congestion will actually be much worse. Without a commercial center, it offers no economic windfall for the city and so, no relief for residential taxpayers – or renters whose landlords’ tax burdens trickle down to them.
Instead, the plan seems to offer much more of something we have in abundance: people. If we have learned one thing from the proliferation of new apartments built here in recent years, it’s that adding people does not bring economic benefits. But it does stress our schools, city services and public infrastructure.
Welcome to the real-life SimCity.
The writer is a civic advocate, management consultant and longtime Alexandria resident.
The post City Hall Watch with Bill Rossello: The SimCity redevelopment of the Duke Street corridor appeared first on Alexandria Times.
