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Structural engineer and architect working with blueprints discuss at the outdoors construction site.
Every fall, Alexandria Living Magazine takes a look at about 40 development projects in the works in the Alexandria region, including Southeast Fairfax County. This year, some are stalled for a variety of reasons, but many others are moving forward.
For the next 40 days or so, Alexandria Living Magazine will highlight one project per day on alexandrialivingmagazine.com. Bookmark this page to keep up, or be sure you're signed up for our email newsletters to catch up a few times per week.
We'll post the first project on Wednesday, Sept. 4.
In broad strokes, Alexandria is a sort of microcosm of what’s going on elsewhere in the country. The Alexandria area is a leader in projects to convert under-used office buildings to residential. You can see this in a project underway at 1101 King Street now. In addition, like elsewhere, Alexandria is working on replacing a dead mall with a new, vibrant mixed-use community.
Elsewhere in the region, new live-work-play communities are continuing to attract new residents. Coworking Café earlier this year named Alexandria the #2 best mid-sized city for recent college grads who want to start their careers. The city is also continuing to collect accolades, including being named the #3 Best City in the United States in 2024 by Condé Nast Traveler in July.
Despite that rosy outlook, the environment for development right now is not great. In his monthly newsletter, Wilson noted "vacancies are cascading across the region as a parade of horrible news continues for commercial real estate and development in general." There are a number of vacant storefronts in Old Town and elsewhere, offices are frequently vacant and major regional employers are divesting themselves of leases.
"The development under way in Alexandria today are projects that were approved years ago. These projects were financed in a different economy. Many of these efforts under way are proceeding with financing from the City or its partners. The pipeline of new development is slowing as development costs have risen, financing has been more difficult to come by and competition growing," Wilson explained in his monthly newsletter.
Only time (and interest rates) will tell what happens going forward.
Of all the developments, nothing drew public interest this year quite like a plot of land behind the Potomac Yard Shopping Center. Called a "Monumental Opportunity" by Alexandria and Virginia officials (and a "Monumental Mistake" by opponents), the now-canceled plan to build a professional sports arena near the Potomac Yard Metro station divided the city’s residents.
At a recent Alexandria Economic Development Partnership event, AEDP's Stephanie Landrum noted that the the attention from the possibility of attracting the Capitals and Wizards professional sports teams to Alexandria resulted in multiple inquiries of interest from other companies — not just for Potomac Yard, but for all parts of the city.
"In a failure, we had some big wins," Wilson said at that event.
