(Andrew Harnik/Examiner)
The city is trying to create a development plan for the neighborhood to the east side of the Braddock Road Metro station. Angry residents were out in force at a community meeting on Thursday night, protesting the size and high density of the buildings the city is proposing.

Maria Hegstad, The Examiner
2007-04-16 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

Voluble Parker-Gray resident protests have slowed Alexandria’s development plans for commercial blocks on the east side of the Braddock Road Metro station.

The county’s plan for the area was supposed to be considered at the planning commission’s May meeting. Commission Chairman Eric Wagner told attendees at a community meeting Thursday it would be postponed so city staff can consider more of residents’ concerns.

City officials are looking at the warehouses, parking lots and garages between the Metro line, U.S. Route 1 and Oronocco Street as potential sites for mixed residential and retail redevelopment. Alexandria has 19 development plans covering other parts of the city, and they’ve been useful to guide growth, acting planning director Rich Josephson said.

But plans to build multistory buildings horrifies residents. The buildings would dwarf their townhouses and increase traffic on old, narrow streets.

“The plan places too high a premium on generating high density and new tax revenue for the city and too little mind to the character of the current neighborhood,” Mark Freeman and Boyd Walker wrote in a letter they plan to send to City Council this week. “If we wanted to live in high rises, we would have moved to Crystal City, Carlyle or Rosslyn.”

According to planning and zoning documents, the majority of the parcels considered for development were rezoned in 1992 for medium–and high–density mixed office, commercial and residential uses.

What could be built under the current zonings could prove far worse than what the development plan suggests, staff and a developer at the meeting said, but they did not provide examples.

Planning and zoning staff did not return calls seeking comment.

Higher–density residential properties make it possible for developers to include affordable housing units in the projects, Josephson said.

Residents argued that Parker-Gray, a historically black neighborhood, has some of the most reasonable housing in the city and urged the county to spread affordable units to other neighborhoods.

Opposite the Metro station is a large section of public housing that some residents called the key to the plan. Unless it is also rebuilt, redevelopment won’t succeed, residents argued.

mhegstad@dcexaminer.com