Redevelopment at Washington Vista:

In conversation with Peter Schultz in Arlington County Zoning and Tom Artley in Environmental Services I discovered the following:
Diamond Properties, owner of Washington Vista, intends to redevelop. Their application for a by-right permit to construct, # B0603131, is circulating through the Arlington County government.* The plan is to tear down Washington Vista and the private house next door on the north, and replace them with a six-story-plus-garage condo. The new building will pretty much cover the entire lot.

A few issues come to mind:

Construction impacts:
The county is aware that Turnberry is under construction next door. They've promised to avoid closing off both sidewalks. But many construction issues are not worked out like hauling out debris, temporary street closures and narrowing, temporary utility outage, bedrock removal techniques, etc. Perhaps we should request that Diamond meet with us to discuss these issues.

Walkway:
The existing walkway from Colonial Terrace to Key will not remain. However on the east edge of the Washington Vista lot, the county owns a 15 foot right of way from Colonial Terrace to Key. We should as a neighborhood decide if we want the county to provide a new path on that right of way, or if we'd prefer to leave it untouched. Then we will have to talk to the Arlington Neighborhood Conservation office about getting those desires formalized, and if necessary, funded. None of this will happen unless someone volunteers to lead the effort. It shouldn't be a massive time sink and the effort does stand a good chance of leading to positive results. But nothing much will happen without some voluntarism.


*The entire permit package is the size of Saint Peter's book. I have a ˜streamlined' version consisting of twenty, 2 foot X 3 foot, pages.