Chris Militzer/Miliman12 Photography
City of Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson.
Some backlash by Alexandria residents against the narrowing of Seminary Road has not surprised Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, he said Tuesday in an interview about his priorities for the City of Alexandria in 2020.
In September, Alexandria City Council approved reconfiguration of the road from four lanes to three lanes (one lane in each direction plus a center turn lane) to reduce speeding, add pedestrian crossings and enhance mobility and safety for bicyclists. Ongoing work to the project includes adjustments to signal timing at St. Stephens Road, Quaker Lane and Howard Street.
Since then, a Facebook group called Alexandria Residents Against the Seminary Road Diet was created, numbering more than 1,000, along with signs and the hashtag "#Justinstrafficjam" popping up online and around the community in yards and on fences.
"It's always difficult, and certainly change that impacts roads and transportation and the way people get around is certainly always going to be uncomfortable," he said in a New Year's Eve interview with Alexandria Living.
"That issue was one that we as a community worked through for a little over a year," he noted. The issue attracted "two very well-organized and very energetic and passionate sides...people in favor of what we did and people against what we did and that's the same today, and it hasn't really changed."
"I don't think it [backlash to the narrowing of the road] was a surprise," he said. "There was a significant process leading up to the vote in September and then in November when everything was implemented there was also significant attention as people reacted to what had happened. Some of that is quieting down now and some of the challenges we saw early on in November have subsided. Change is always a challenge in our community, for any issue."
"If you look at where we're spending money, the city's $1.6 billion in our 10-year capital improvement program on transportation, most of that is going to transit, it's going to Metro, the new Potomac Yard station, the West End Transitway that we're going to be building and eventually Transit Corridor B which is the east-west transitway on Duke Street at some point," he said.
"That's where we're spending the resources that the taxpayers provide us with and I think that's been our focus for congestion mitigation for a long time, to provide transit alternatives," he said. "In a region like ours, we're never going to eliminate traffic. We want to manage it the best we can to make sure it doesn't adversely affect our residents as much as we possibly can, but ultimately the goal is to provide alternatives to folks to provide them options to get them where they need to go."
Bringing Virginia Tech to Alexandria
Securing land use approvals and the "nitty gritty" of bringing Virginia Tech to Alexandria is a top priority in the new year, Wilson said. "We're now past the point of the euphoria and now we're in the phase where we work through the details of bringing it to Potomac Yard. Those approvals will come this year and some will have a community planning process to bring that to a close. It's exciting, it's a good thing, but it's work you've got to do."
"Last year we kicked off this partnership with Arlington to make sure it's more inclusive and benefits the entire community and this year we're going to put some flesh to those bones," he said. "Virginia Tech will be a big part of some of the work we do in 2020."
Landmark Mall
Another area that also includes the development approval process is Landmark Mall, Wilson said.
"At Landmark, we have a landowner who has now consolidated control and they're looking at changes to the plan there and make sure it comes to reality," he said. "We'll be working with them in a community process and working to bring that to closure. We've been talking about that for the better part of 20 years. Trying to make that actually happen this year I think will be a big conversation."
Wilson said he doesn't expect any groundbreaking on the project in 2020 though. "They've asked for financial support from the city and we'll be working through the details of what that looks like and what we're willing to entertain is going to be a big part of what we have to conclude this year."
School capacity
"We've had, for a few years, this process of how we plan school capacity, both high school and elementary and working through the details of that," the mayor noted.
"This will be the year this becomes very real now," he said. "I'll give you two examples I think we're going to have to be nitty gritty on. The board has approved a vision for maintaining a single high school with a rebuild of Minnie Howard. We have to figure out how we're going to pay for that — it's much more than we had originally set aside ($124 million) for capacity, even beyond how we pay, it's what it is. My big push has been around looking at multiple municipal uses. We're not just building a high school but a variety of municipal needs. That'll be a conversation we'll have at T.C. Williams and Douglas MacArthur, where we're doing the next rebuild."
Affordable housing
How Alexandria deals with "zoning for housing" as a tool to create more affordable housing is also a goal in the new year, Wilson said.
The only options, he said, are spending taxpayer dollars to create housing or working with private landowners to create housing that is ultimately affordable. "Those are really our only options."
"We have done a fair amount of creating affordable housing," he said. "One thing we haven't done is use our zoning authority to create more affordability. The Council of Governments made a regional commitment around creating additional housing to address affordability. All the jurisdictions are figuring out how to meet these housing goals to meet the job growth coming to this region."
The thing that will come to the council in April or May is an accessory dwelling unit ordinance, that would allow single-family property owners to build an accessory dwelling unit on their property, the mayor said.
Simultaneously, there is a statewide effort to deregulate housing and allow people to build duplexes and more density where it is currently not allowed. State deregulation would not, as some critics say, ban the development of single family homes, but it would give cities like Alexandria more options for housing density and affordability.
"Right now you can build a garage but you can't build what they call a 'granny flat' in Alexandria today," he said. "We'll be bringing in an ordinance that will potentially allow that. That's probably one of the biggest discussions we'll have on that issue."
Wilson said his personal resolutions for 2020 include running more, staying off his phone during meals and eating a little better. "I'm getting to that point where I need to watch that more than I have in the past."
