Patience and Other Virtues

If you haven’t yet had the chance, it’s worth your time to take a stroll through Oakville Triangle, the neighborhood (sub-neighborhood? development?) west of Rt. 1 between Glebe and Custis in Potomac Yard. Long a cluster of low-slung industrial buildings, storage units, an auto repair/scrapyard combo, and an empty parking lot where people occasionally parked their oversized recreational vehicles, it now features a brand-new hospital, apartment buildings, townhomes, new parks, new bike infrastructure, and still more under construction. There is also a (sigh) Founding Farmers, which absolutely feels like the result of a monkey paw’s wish for an established DC restaurant to open a location in Alexandria [Editor’s note: we meant like, an Aaron Silverman joint or something!!].

And while we totally missed the opportunity to “National Landing” this bitch by tagging it with a totally cringe awesome moniker like “WePoYa” we haven’t missed the opportunity to appreciate what this project represents: patience. Things have been a long time coming for the Oakville Triangle, with potential for its mixed use development being mentioned as far back as 1992 as part of the Potomac Yard/Potomac Greens Small Area Plan, saying “the other large redevelopment site is the 24 acre Oakville Triangle site, located along Jefferson Davis Highway [Editor’s note: okay, so not all of this aged well] between the former W&OD right-of-way and Swann Street, which consists of a large concentration of light industrial uses. While the Potomac West Small Area Plan calls for continued industrial development of this site, long-term redevelopment of the site, possibly for mixed use development, could occur as the value of the land increases and as industrial uses become less viable within the city.”

More specific plans for the Oakville Triangle were created in 2014, with a nine-member advisory group put together to develop a vision plan for the corridor in partnership with city staff. You should really take some time to click around the city website for the vision plan because the amount of documentation in here–population projections, park plans, retail market analysis, transportation studies, and more–is incredibly thorough and interesting. And not without controversy at the time! There were concerns about how the street grid would or wouldn’t connect through, there were concerns about the type of use the park might get, there were concerns about the compatibility of the vision with the surrounding neighborhood. But the plan was finalized and passed in 2015 and then it just… kind of sat.

This is probably the part where you’re wondering why we’re spilling so much digital ink about five or six city blocks when there’s an entire damn city to write about–but it’s because we think this last point is really important. The progress of cities isn’t linear. Energy for things builds and ebbs, and something that might feel like a failure at first (in 2019 it really didn’t seem like anything was ever going to happen with this parcel) can come back around to be a tremendous success. We should remember examples like this when we get antsy about projects like the Heritage in Old Town, or the site of the old motel along North Washington Street. Oakville Triangle really felt like it was never going to happen, right up until it did. And now we have a (sigh) Founding Farmers!

The other thing that’s important to note here is how incredibly thorough and transparent that city planning website for this area was. Go back and click on it again, look at how much is on there! All of that just for one relatively minor 24-acre site! And now think of how the city does that for every single major planning effort in every part of the city and you realize not only the tremendous work that’s being done by staff but how far the vision of city leaders–both professional and elected–stretches into the future.

And finally there is something worth dwelling on here about purpose finding place. We’ve frequently seen an argument against development projects that don’t match the existing “character” of a neighborhood, but this is a case where things just feel right. It really feels natural for there to be a hospital there. The apartment buildings and townhomes feel of a part with the rest of Potomac Yard. This is a dense parcel with a lot of housing and other uses and it just feels like this is what it always should have been, down to the cool natural playground and bike trails that wind through the back of the site and connect it to the rest of Del Ray.

So please, come and enjoy your brunch at (sigh) Founding Farmers, and while you do, look around in appreciation of what a little patience can give us in the end.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• Alexandria Little League Opening Day is coming up on March 29 (10:30am) at Simpson Field and sincerely few things make it feel more officially spring than this, so come on out. Will it also be fun to watch over 800 donut-fueled players, some as young as 4, try to line up and parade onto the field? Yes, yes it will. And while this event will forever suffer from the loss of a khakis-clad Mayor Wilson tossing out the first pitch in dress shoes, we’re excited to see Vice Mayor Bagley put her own stamp on the ceremonial delivery.
• Everybody can breathe a huge sigh of relief, Jesse’s access to elf smut has been restored.
• March boards and commissions vacancies, come get your March boards and commissions vacancies! Fill out an application and join other ALXtra subscribers who have recently been appointed to serve on local advisory bodies! It’s fun, you get to meet cool people, and sometimes there’s even free food.
• A new study shows that saying bad words can increase your pain tolerance by 33%, and WTOP chose Old Town as a location to interview people on the street about it. “Those sons of bitches come to our goddamn city and don’t interview us? US?? Fuck that shit!!!” we profanely exclaim, our minds and bodies fully impervious to suffering of any kind.
• During last week’s federal funding fight there was a report that the threatened DC budget cuts might cancel Capital One arena renovation plans… so you’re saying we’ve still got a chance?? GET US A TENT IN A PARKING LOT, STAT.

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. Shirlington Yearns To Be Free (Last week: NR). As longtime readers know, we here at ALXtra HQ have been vocally enthusiastic about annexing Shirlington reducing barriers to regional cohesion. And all the while we’ve done so with the quiet conviction that the good patrons of the DMV’s second-best Busboys and Poets surely longed to join the Port City as well, casting off the shackles of that embarrassingly streetcar-less county they currently call home. But according to posters that started popping up around town last week… maybe they don’t?? 

As appreciators of a good Molon Labe-ing [Editors’s note: “come and take it” being what Jesse screams at the elementary school kids politely asking him to please leave the pickleball court after 3 hours so they can do chalk drawings] we found this message of defiance compelling, and began to mourn the death of Alexandria’s manifest destiny. But then, a counter-resistance!

Clearly this issue is not as cut and dry as the first posters would lead one to believe, and there are yet brave Alexandria partisans in the hills and villages around Shirlington ready to take it after coming [Editor’s note: PHRASING]. We eagerly await to see if the next phase of the liberation involves drinkers at Dudley’s huddled around a shortwave radio listening to the Liberally Social podcast like it’s Voice of America (RIP).

2. You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong, or Possibly Right, Who the Hell Knows (Last week: NR). We (pedestrians) are so back!!! The pilot program closing the 200 block of King Street to cars resumed last week and will extend through the end of September. Public opinion on this seems generally positive but also kind of confused? Like, are we supposed to hate things now that they’re not Justin Wilson’s fault or do we not care anymore. What’s the default kneejerk reaction these days, we need somebody to get a gut-check from BIBA. And what’s the consensus on making things seem more European at this particular moment in time? If we visit a pedestrianized street is that functionally like going to Belgium and if so are we going to be allowed back into the country (Del Ray) afterwards? All we’re saying is we need a little guidance, help us out here T&ES.
3. Ready For It? (Last week: 1). So we finally have something that literally is Alexandria’s Hottest Club and we’re talking about it here rather than down below, but that’s just part of the ALXtra Promise™ that absolutely nothing we do will ever make editorial sense. Anyway, it’s been another couple of absolutely massive weeks for Alexandria’s Actual Hottest Club with lines all the way down the block of Swifties waiting to get in and get a perfectly ‘gram-able snapshot of the decor (Del Ray hasn’t seen lines this long since the dog portrait artist put the last few squares on the Stomping Ground wall up for grabs). Honestly this is the true genius of Eras: it’s not the fun drink names, or the themed decorations, or the friendship bracelets–it’s recreating the experience of waiting in line at a Taylor Swift concert chatting with random Swifties. 
4. Unusual Numeric Fixations (Last week: NR). Have you heard that Alexandria will soon have a new tallest building? If you have, you’ve almost certainly seen the number 31 repeatedly emphasized because this apartment tower is going to have THIRTY-ONE ENTIRE STORIES. Which like, okay. That is tall. But does it seem funny to anyone else that everyone is so obsessed with this specific number? It’s mentioned in every headline, press release, and comment section like it inherently defines the essential quality of the building, along the lines of a 21-gun salute, 3-ring circus, or 6-minute abs (which as we all know are vastly superior to 7-minute abs). Is 31 the magic number where a building goes from “normal height” to “dost mine eyes deceive me or doth that building pierce the veil of heaven”? Is this secretly a tribute to Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors? Does it have to do with the fact that 31 is a slang term for masturbation in Turkish, a fact we just now learned from reading the Wikipedia page on the number 31? Whatever the case, one thing is certain: if anybody in this city ever proposes to build a 32-story building we may all spontaneously combust.
5. The Eye of the Beholder (Last week: NR). The new Waterfront Park art has been installed! And just in the nick of time, as it’s given Alexandrians a fun new distracting hobby: comparing it to other things that it kind of looks like. The official description says that its “centerpiece, crafted from blackened wood, evokes the sidewheel of the steamboat River Queen” and is “encircled by black sandbags.” But depending on the angle it could alternatively call to mind: Mayan sacrificial altar, hockey puck dropped sideways into a pile of black jelly beans, sinking portal to another dimension, stage for 2000s emo band revival performance, melting Oreo, and/or dystopian Wheel of Fortune. It’s a bit of an inkblot situation where you can see pretty much anything your sick twisted mind wants when you look at it. And isn’t that the hallmark of great art? Tell us in the comments what you think it resembles, but be warned that we will attempt to psychoanalyze you.

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… ACPS Redistricting

There are a few words and phrases that are guaranteed to stress you out as an ACPS parent: “PowerSchool,” “mold,” “bus incident,” and of course the big one, “redistricting.” Just hearing the word prompts a lot of questions. Is my kid going to have to switch schools? What if I forget and accidentally pick them up at the old school? What if I wait outside the wrong school so long that the other parents get suspicious and report me to the authorities? It’s a lot to think about.

Fortunately our school board members are trying to help make the process less confusing and overwhelming with an informative blog post about what’s happened so far and what’s coming up next. And that’s not all! ALXtra reader and fellow local governance sicko Alex G. is also on hand to explain how we might want to think about redistricting from a policy perspective and how it intersects with other important issues like housing. He sent us a manifesto letter that’s so long insightful we decided we’d run it here in full because we’re feeling lazy this week it deserves your attention. 

We’ll let Alex take it from here:

As ACPS works through the redistricting process, they’re trying to balance several different priorities including encouraging neighborhood schools, minimizing bus dependency, promoting diversity & inclusion, and balancing the capacities of each school. 

Some of those goals work well together: kids attending a neighborhood school require less busing as many will be able to walk or bike. Others can be in conflict: if a neighborhood isn’t diverse, then having a “neighborhood school” centered there will tend to reproduce that lack of diversity unless you bus in kids who live farther away.

The funny shapes and sizes of our current elementary school districts show how hard it is to balance these things. Some make visual sense as real “neighborhood schools” – the nice compact Cora Kelly and Ferdinand Day districts for example. Others are wonky. George Mason has a little exclave up north. Naomi Brooks is barely keeping her district tied together while Jefferson Houston tries to eat part of it. Lyles Crouch has a tentacle reaching down Eisenhower. Patrick Henry and James Polk look like former colonies with borders drawn by the British Empire. Douglas McArthur is HUGE.

That last one – and how it’s proposed to change – is a great example of how ACPS has to play a tough hand dealt to it by decades of exclusionary land use policy. (You knew this was always gonna come back to land use 😉). The blue portions on the map below, dominating most of central Alexandria, are our former(?*) single-family zones (*pending outcome of Zoning for Housing lawsuit), where the only housing allowed is a single house on a plot of land ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet at minimum.

This means there simply are not many people living here compared to other parts of the city, and those who do live here are Alexandrians who can (or at some point could) afford at least 5,000 square feet of valuable NOVA real estate. Plus a house on it! In related news, these areas are also generally less diverse, both racially and economically, than the rest of Alexandria. 

Okay, one last map–this one shows ACPS student density. As you might expect, there are far fewer ACPS students in central ALX than in the rest of the city. That makes sense, as there are fewer people in general!

The impact on school districts is straightforward: a school in the middle of an area with few students is going to need a much larger district to fill its classrooms. MacArthur’s district is huge because it has to be huge to find enough students. And yet, even with the largest district of any elementary school, MacArthur is still underutilized. 

This underutilization, and the overcrowding at other schools, explains why all three of the proposed redistricting plans have DMac’s district expanding to the west, further from the school’s actual location. One plan envelops Seminary Towers, giving those students a 2-mile commute to MacArthur in place of their current 1-mile trip to Polk:

The other two envelop parts of Fox Chase and Wakefield Tarleton, again shifting school commutes to about 2 miles for people located 0.5 miles from Patrick Henry. They all exchange walkable distances (the current ACPS limit for this is 1 mile for elementary kids) for trips where kids need a bus.

In the end it’s the families at the edges of this large district–both the current district and the new proposals–who pay for the fact that central Alexandria’s zoning codes eliminated the possibility of a true neighborhood school there. They’ll ride a bus every day for school and activities while other Alexandria kids get to walk or bike, costing them time, money, exercise, time outside, and the benefits of building a school community where they actually live. This also adds transportation expenses to the already cash-strapped school system, and traffic to the city in general.

Past zoning laws have dealt ACPS a tough hand, and we have to play it as best we can. That probably includes sacrificing neighborhood schools for some kids in exchange for less crowding on the West End and more diversity in central Alexandria. But it doesn’t always have to be this way. If we want diverse and equitable neighborhood schools the next time redistricting comes around, we need to continue pushing for diverse and equitable neighborhoods in all of Alexandria. 

We Get Letters

We are blessed with an abundance of thoughtful correspondence this week as reader Melynda W. writes in to supplement our essay in the March 7 issue about Alexandria’s federal grants:

Jesse and Becky, thanks for your newsletter about grants. I also wanted to point out that the city of Alexandria as well as local arts nonprofits receive funding from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives funding from, you guessed it, the National Endowment for the Arts. For instance, the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, which is the city’s largest performing arts nonprofit with a budget of around $1 million, gets a grant direction from the Va. Commission for the Arts, as well as a smaller grant from the city that comes through the Alexandria Commission for the Arts. Arts nonprofits are already operating on a shoestring; any reduction in grant funds that have been budgeted and expected will mean staff layoffs, fewer artists employed and cuts in programs for the community.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Melynda–as we mentioned in that essay, it can be hard to untangle where different funding streams are coming from. We hope our local arts community can find additional grants–whether state, local, or philanthropic–to make up for any budget gaps created by federal shortfalls. This multi-pronged fundraising strategy is of course what Pitbull was referring to when he famously said, “Ask for money and get advice; ask for advice, get money twice.”

One Awesome Thing in ALX

Speaking of fundraising, dedicated ALXtra readers know that one of our favorite things is to highlight and support the work of the nonprofit organizations helping people in our community. Most of the time we do that by writing words [Editor’s note: oh my god, so many words] and donating a portion of our subscription revenue. But last weekend we did it with cupcakes! Becky was inspired by a Know Your Rights training she attended to organize a bake sale to raise money for a local provider of pro bono immigration legal assistance, Restoration Immigration Legal Aid. Most immigration violations are civil offenses (not criminal), so there’s no right to a public defender. That places a heavy demand on free legal services from private providers and the legal aid organizations in our region are struggling to meet the need.

The bake sale turned out to be a success. This had basically nothing to do with Becky’s planning skills (which are mediocre at best) and everything to do with the enthusiastic help and participation of many friends and acquaintances. At a time when depressing events are unfolding on an hourly basis, it was heartening to see so many people–including some we knew only from Bluesky–pitch in with offers to bake a tray of rice krispies treats or bring over an extra folding table or just spread the word.

Despite the fact that we weren’t set up in a busy area, we managed to raise $2,425 for RILA. There were no big-dollar donors, just lots of folks buying five or ten dollars worth of brownies and cookies and something called “fruckies” (??). It was satisfying to raise that much money for a good cause, but it also felt really nice to have something concrete and tangible to focus on while organizing this event instead of just endlessly doomscrolling and spiraling–we strongly recommend this as a coping mechanism for surviving AOTS (All of This Shit) if you have the capacity to take on the effort. To all those who helped out with the bake sale in any way, thank you for being awesome. And if you missed it but still want to chip in, you can donate to RILA directly here.

You can follow Becky @beckyhammer.bsky.social and Jesse @oconnell.bsky.social on Bluesky, or you can e-mail us anytime at alxtranewsletter@gmail.com.

ALXtra is a free-to-read newsletter about current events in Alexandria, Virginia. Subscribe to get it delivered directly to your inbox. Paid subscriptions give you access to the comments. Revenue from subscriptions gets used in the following ways: 1) a third goes into a charity fund, and every time that fund hits $500 we’ll make a donation to a local charity in the name of ALXtra’s readers and we’ll feature and write about that organization, like we did here, here, here, and here; 2) another third of the money will go toward investments in the newsletter; and 3) the final third of the money goes toward self-care for your two intrepid authors.