A couple of city council members changed their minds about their March 13 vote against the Braddock West development, which was set to bring a 7-story, mixed-use multifamily and retail building to the Braddock Road Metro area if approved.
During Tuesday night’s city council legislative meeting, city council members voted 5-2 to rescind their original 4-3 vote against the development
The matter will be taken up again for public hearing and vote on May 15, but a pending lawsuit by an Alexandria resident may delay a final decision.
Rescinding a vote in Alexandria is both rare and controversial. The Ramsey Homes project is the most recent example. City council voted to deny redevelopment of the apartments, and then rescinded the vote just a few days later in February 2016. The rescinding of that vote paved the way for the historic Ramsey Homes apartments to be redeveloped into a new mixed-income development that provides a total of 52 affordable units to the City’s inventory. The new development, called Lineage, just opened its doors last week.
The idea to rescind the vote to put Seminary Road on a road diet was brought up in December 2019, but it was not pursued.
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Originally, council members Canek Aguirre, John Taylor Chapman, Amy Jackson and Mo Seifeldein voted against the Braddock West development in March, citing lack of community engagement and flooding issues in the neighborhood. According to a memo from City Manager Mark Jinks to the City Council, Aguirre led efforts to revisit the application less than a month later.
"At the City Council legislative meeting on Tuesday, April 6, 2021, during the oral reports, Councilman [Canek] Aguirre indicated that he understood that the developer has been addressing the concern regarding the lack of contact with the adjacent ARHA development and requested that a motion to rescind the vote be placed on the docket for City Council’s consideration on Tuesday, April 27, 2021,” reads the report. "The result of a motion to rescind is that the question of whether to approve or deny the requested land use applications is back on the table for consideration."
Aguirre and Chapman overturned their original votes against the Braddock West development.
Aguirre explained his reasoning further at Tuesday’s meeting. “I felt like the applicant engaged with the residents and will continue this engagement with residents that are going to be most impacted by this development. When I had made my initial vote, I voted out of protest that they were not meeting with that requirement – well it’s not a requirement technically – but they were not meeting with that. But overall I did think that this was a good project so I’m glad that that dialogue was opened up and that we can potentially move forward and the community will have another opportunity to weigh in on it.”
Chapman did not provide an explanation for his decision during the 7-hour-plus meeting, which started Tuesday night and lasted into the wee hours of Wednesday morning. He did not respond to a subsequent request for comments.
Not all residents agree with Aguirre. Long-time Alexandrian John Craig lives 100 feet from the proposed project and spoke in opposition to the project at the March 13 meeting, where he highlighted flooding that occurs at the nearby intersection.
“My primary concern about Braddock West or any other new development in this area is the safety and wellbeing of its future residents given their highly probable exposure to intense stormwater floods,” Craig wrote in a recent letter to city council. He explained that any stormwater detainment capability that will be part of the project will not be adequate for the entire problem, particularly in light of the fact that the areas is not currently listed as part of any City led stormwater capital improvement projects.
Craig took it a step further in his letter, saying that he hired an attorney, John Thorpe Richards, Jr. of Bogorad & Richards PLLC. The attorney argued in a separate letter that voting to overturn the March 13 vote so soon is illegal.
Richards cited three identical provisions (§ 11-904(D), §11-805(D) and § 11-507) in the Alexandria Zoning Ordinance to support his argument:
“Reconsideration of application. The subject matter of an application for a map amendment which has been denied by the city council shall not be considered thereafter by the planning commission or the city council for a period of one year unless the new application differs in a material respect from the application which was denied, in which case it may be considered after a period of six months.”
City Attorney Joanna Anderson briefly spoke to Richard’s letter during Tuesday’s meeting, only after Seifeldein asked her to address it. She argued that the Zoning Ordinance provisions “reference new applications, not continued discussion on the same applications.”
Mayor Justin Wilson, Vice Mayor Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, Council Member Del Pepper, Aguirre and Chapman ultimately voted in favor of rescinding the March vote. Jackson and Seifeldein objected and made clear that they do not intend to change their initial vote regarding the Braddock West development unless it is clear during public testimony that flooding concerns will be adequately addressed.
On Wednesday, Richards confirmed that he and his client plan to file a lawsuit.
