King+Beauregard project

[Fairlington124]

Initial Site plan is available online (https://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/planning/info/Development_Projects/DSUP2013-00001%20Preliminary%20Site%20Plan1.pdf).

My thoughts – Let’s be real, the West End will never be Clarendon in our lifetimes. The road and property geometry, and topography, just won’t allow it. But I think it’s perhaps as good as we can get. Property developer can’t build an entire street grid just out of one parcel, and the City doesn’t have a neigborhood plan to implement one.

Seeing as cycling is the prime concern of this blog, I would simply like to state that I hope that the plan includes provision for bike parking. As many here may know, that area is due to undergo a project which will:

-Remove the slip lanes going from King to Walter Reed/Beauregard (in both directions)
-Widen the sidewalks into MUPs
-Eliminate left turns across King+Walter Reed/Beauregard

All of theses will help cyclists access, and go through the area. I presume the central area of the project is envisioned as a mixed-use plaza-like area. I hope and am concerned that it will be used as an extended slip lane for people who are coming north on Beauregard and want to go east on King. This is fully on the hands of previous generations of planners who turned this area into a bunch of “super blocks”, without allowing for a proper street grid. Hence, anyone driving is necessarily forced to go on a major artery (King, Beauregard, Braddock, Seminary, Hampton), even if they only need to go a short distance.

Topic

[CaseyKane50]

@dasgeh 140338 wrote:

Maybe he’ll want to move to Alexandria, what with all those people filling up the Arlington parks and community centers.

That is not a good idea. I ignored him last night since he lived in Arlington. If he lived in Alexandria I might have gotten as stirred up as LOTM.

[lordofthemark]

The project is now well underway. On the SE corner, the slip lane is now closed, which is probably good for those using the sidewalk to go north-south on the east side of King, but actually makes things a bit worse for now for those using the crosswalk to get west across King, since we now have to deal with right turning traffic. There is fencing all along the apt building on the west side of King, north of 28th street, which I think is preparation for the retaining wall work. It also appears that all the retail stores in the old shopping center on the southwest corner are now closed.

And this would seem to mean the project is at least 9 months behind the above schedule, since the retaining walls do not appear to be close to done.

[lordofthemark]

There has been extensive work on the west side of King Street, south of Beauregard. You can now see where the MUP is going to be, as that has now been carved out from the hillside, though for now I think they will only be doing the retaining wall and utility work, and not finishing the trail. The existing narrow sidepath is open again. There is also a trench carved in front of the old shopping center along Beauregard, presumably for utility placement.

However the corner east of King and north of Walter Reed now no longer has an ADA compliant curb cut to the crosswalk south along King, for reasons that were not clear to me when I came through yesterday evening. For now the best thing to do for cyclists going west on Walter Reed to south on King is either to take the lane on Walter Reed to avoid the corner (something I am not yet willing to do, uphill, at rush hour) or dismount to enter the crosswalk. I am not sure what wheelchair users are supposed to do.

[Fairlington124]

I should add that there is an impressive retaining wall plainly visible on that side of King. Work on the opposite side of King has not yet started.

Separately, work on the adjacent “Alexandria Gateway” project (Retail+Housing) is well underway with a lot of heavy earthwork.

[lordofthemark]

Will wonders never cease?

The rise of ground and the staircase in front of the health dept building, which was said to be out of scope, is now completely torn up. I assume for utility relocation? But it would appear that there is now no reason NOT to extend the MUT south of 28th Street (except perhaps the need to narrow in front of the dry cleaners). Though I have not heard anything about whether or not that is now the plan.

[Fairlington124]

Yeah I noticed that too. It’d be a travesty if they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to extend the sidepath along there, which would provide connections to the bike lane on northbound Hampton, or onto the wide sidewalk further east along King.

[peterw_diy]

Has anyone talked to Ray about this yet?

[lordofthemark]

The block north of 28th and south of the new building, where the MUP is supposed to go, appears to have had some kind of turf put in to cover the new utilities. Evidently they don’t plan to open the MUP section till a later phase, presumably after the newe building is built the MUP is open all the way to Beauregard.

[lordofthemark]

@lordofthemark 160950 wrote:

Will wonders never cease?

The rise of ground and the staircase in front of the health dept building, which was said to be out of scope, is now completely torn up. I assume for utility relocation? But it would appear that there is now no reason NOT to extend the MUT south of 28th Street (except perhaps the need to narrow in front of the dry cleaners). Though I have not heard anything about whether or not that is now the plan.

There appears to be a retaining wall under construction in front of the health dept building. It looks to me like the way is being prepared to extend the MUP south of 28th as part of this project. However its not clear to me how the MUP (if that is indeed what will go there) would interact with the parking lot in front of Dutch Cleaners.

[Fairlington124]

I was wondering that too…will the new right-of-way (for either road or MUP at this point) eat into the dry cleaners parking lot? Seems like an odd abrupt end, as opposed to widening it all the way to Hampton, where there is the automobile slip lane and bike lane.

It looks like the “6 ft sidewalk” will indeed cut across the front of the parking lot and go all the way to Hampton.

https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/tes/info/King-Beauregard%20Improvement%20Project%20Design%20(3.3%20MB).pdf

[lordofthemark]

@Fairlington124 166528 wrote:

I was wondering that too…will the new right-of-way (for either road or MUP at this point) eat into the dry cleaners parking lot? Seems like an odd abrupt end, as opposed to widening it all the way to Hampton, where there is the automobile slip lane and bike lane.

It looks like the “6 ft sidewalk” will indeed cut across the front of the parking lot and go all the way to Hampton.

https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/tes/info/King-Beauregard%20Improvement%20Project%20Design%20(3.3%20MB).pdf

Good catch. But a 6ft sidewalk, instead of a 10 ft MUT. Though I think that is still wider than the existing sidewalk. The area adjacent to the new retaining wall by the health dept building looks wider than that to me, but perhaps I am misjudging.

[Fairlington124]

Google Earth measurement ~3.0 feet

[CDFairlington]

@chris_s 140318 wrote:

Congrats, I’m pretty sure your Fairlington character was perennial Arlington [commenter] [name redacted at individual’s request]. He pontificates at every Arlington County Board meeting as well as various other meetings.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

We sent a representative from our neighborhood (around Abingdon School) and our attorney because we were and are fed up with lack of traffic ordinance enforcement related to speed limits and stop signs, the reckless behavior by bicyclists in our neighborhood, the lack of open space and activity space in the site plans approved for King and Beauregard, and the traffic that will be generated by the King and Beauregard redevelopment.

It’s appalling that a blog sponsored by Arlington County would contain so much hate speech directed against so many – ranging from the police to motorists.

[lordofthemark]

@CDFairlington 176976 wrote:

We sent a representative from our neighborhood (around Abingdon School) and our attorney because we were and are fed up with lack of traffic ordinance enforcement related to speed limits and stop signs, the reckless behavior by bicyclists in our neighborhood, the lack of open space and activity space in the site plans approved for King and Beauregard, and the traffic that will be generated by the King and Beauregard redevelopment.

It’s appalling that a blog sponsored by Arlington County would contain so much hate speech directed against so many – ranging from the police to motorists.

lack of traffic ordinance enforcement related to speed limits and stop signs, the reckless behavior by bicyclists in our neighborhood,

Those if they are even true (I ride and walk in Fairlington regularly, and I ride safely, and I never see reckless behavior by cyclists there) are NOT concerns of the Alexandria planning department. At all. Raising them there was rude and a waste of everyone’s time. That rudeness said more about the individual who disrupted (indeed trolled) the meeting, than anything we can say here.

As for open space and traffic wrt to Alexandria Gateway, ultimately those are decisions for the City of Alexandria. The meeting was held to inform the community about project schedule and details (and as such of course was open to Arlington residents) It was NOT a review of the project itself, which was approved years ago.

If you do not approve of the smart growth paradigm that Alexandria is implementing, you will need to move to Alexandria to have a voice in changing it.

[lordofthemark]

By the way, this article makes clear that the only vocal opponent to the development is a resident of Arlington County, Fairlington in particular, named Jim Hurysz.

The president of the Fairlington Citizens Association supported the project, as did the Council of Alexandria, unanimously.

https://alextimes.com/2015/11/developers-make-progress-on-housing-affordability-at-the-gateway/

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