Alexandria artist Eric Nelson was on the verge of losing his studio when he had an unexpected revelation while driving down Mount Vernon Avenue a few months ago.
Passing an out-of-business dry cleaner at the corner of Bellefonte Avenue, Nelson looked past the old laundering equipment still visible in the window. He envisioned instead a center for the arts, a building with studio space for 10 artists and an art gallery and wine bar.
Over the next few months, Nelson became even more convinced that Mount Vernon Avenue and the surrounding Del Ray neighborhood was the perfect place for his aspiring business.
"I'd call it a very upscale bohemian neighborhood, very much in support of the arts," said Nelson, who is close to signing a lease for the building and hopes to have his arts center open within a year. "It's incredible how well my idea fits right into what the neighborhood is trying to accomplish.
Neighborhood leaders and city officials could not agree more. Nelson's artistic vision is precisely the type of business they hope to lure to the area under a new development plan recently approved by the Alexandria City Council.
The 129-page Mount Vernon Avenue Business Area Plan envisions the street as a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly place that would attract new retail businesses while retaining what residents call its small-town character.
It seeks to build on demographic and other changes that have occurred in the area since the mid-1990s, transforming a street once described as somewhat desolate into a commercial center beginning to thrive -- and a mainly blue-collar neighborhood into one that is increasingly white-collar.
"People want it to be this vibrant, funky, kind of down-home unique place where they can get together with their friends and raise their kids, where there are opportunities to work, to play, to shop, and where they can walk," said Kimberley Fogle, the city's chief of neighborhood planning and community development. She helped spearhead the working group of residents, business leaders and others that prepared the report.
A major part of the strategy for accomplishing these goals is to position Mount Vernon Avenue and Del Ray as a center for the arts, a place where emerging artists feel comfortable setting up shop, displaying their works and making a home.
"I think one of the many reasons people would be attracted to an area is if you have public art," said Susan Slattery, president of the Del Ray Artisans, a local nonprofit that has been promoting the arts since 1992. "Art is eye-pleasing and it shows vitality," Slattery said. "If a neighborhood has art galleries, I think surely they must have good restaurants, surely they must have good shopping."
The development plan, approved by the City Council on March 12 following a recommendation by the city Planning Commission, faces some obstacles. City officials could not provide a price tag for the physical improvements the report recommends, which range from new pedestrian-oriented lighting to traffic lane changes and benches on the sidewalks. The report acknowledges that "limited public funding is available."
It also analyzes the potential difficulties of the focus on the arts. One possible approach, which the report calls an "anchor strategy," would be to develop one key arts facility, much like the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Old Town. But the report says few suitable buildings exist on Mount Vernon Avenue and that new construction likely would be too expensive.
The arts center that Nelson plans to build for himself and other artists would be far smaller than the Torpedo Factory, which leases 65 studios to 185 working artists. Nelson, who lived in Del Ray 20 years ago, had been working out of a commercial mosaic studio in Arlington, but it closed in January.
Torpedo Factory director Trudi Van Dyke said she supports the Mount Vernon Avenue arts concept, adding that "making people aware of art and art in their daily lives can only benefit all of us."
