News and Analysis
Tomorrow’s Arlington County Board Meeting Item #36 deals with not just affordable housing but garden-style apartments.
If you’re a faithful reader of the HeraldTrib, you know that Buckingham is nothing if not downright slathered in affordable housing and garden-style apartments; you can’t swing a cat by the tail without hitting garden-style apartments in B’ham (not that I've tried).
What’s more, Item #36 deals with the Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board.
Although The Item deals with zoning, it also is keeping just a bit of power from the HALRB. (If you don’t think the HALRB has power, think again, and read here: Shopping Center Dies in HALRB Hands; and here: My Take on the Shopping Center; click then scroll down to see the story.)
I’m guessing that those on the HALRB won’t really see it that way, but The Item will speed up the process of approval for developers who want to revamp garden-style apartments so long they include affordable housing and so long they do not try to increase building height or density; you can change the size of the apartments, say, by adding additions, but you can’t increase the number of units.
(FYI: “Bump outs” is the euphemism for additions added to the backs of apartment buildings—can we just all agree to start calling them, correctly and directly, “additions”? Nobody says, “Hey, the contractor came by and gave me a quote for a bump-out on the back of my house.” But I digress…)
The problem is that this would apply to all garden-style apartments, especially the ones outside the 30 county historic districts. (Much of Buckingham is inside a historic district.)
Those garden-style apartments outside county historic districts are, nevertheless, historic by national standards. However, the National Register of Historic Places holds little sway. If landowners want federal tax credits, they jump through hoops, but nothing says they must jump through any hoops (they just give up the tax credit).
If the zoning change goes through, apartment complex owners could make changes to their garden-style apartments that would turn them into properties that no longer fit even the national standards. (Put vinyl-sided additions with stucco roofs on the back of a brick-and-slate salt-box, for instance, and there goes the national standard).
Plus, the county has not yet finished making a list of the most treasured historic places in Arlington, and what if a changed garden-style apartment complex would have made the list? Well, now it’s gone forever.
Or is it? County staff still can bring an apartment complex to the attention of the county board which then could ask the HALRB to weigh in. So, what's the beef?
The HALRB has a lot of pull in the county. Not only do they oversee development and redevelopment in the county’s historic districts, they can be asked to weigh in on other development.
Perhaps I’m just not a preservationist, but allowing companies (even the ones that stupidly want siding and stucco on brick-and-slate buildings) to expand their properties in order to serve the greater need of affordable housing is OK by me.
The County Board now wants to permit developers to do anything that they want to a garden apartment as long as they preserve affordable housing. This is a meaningless drop in the bucket when compared to the Board's continuing approval of new development. Who is the Board trying to fool with this public relations stunt?