Arlington Approves Plan for Housing

County to Preserve Affordable Units

Arlington County plans to spend $32.1 million to buy part of the Buckingham Village apartment complex to preserve affordable housing for some of its residents. Other areas will be converted into townhouses. (By Paul Corbit Brown For The Washington Post)

The Arlington County Board unanimously endorsed a sweeping plan last night to allow redevelopment of part of the Buckingham Village area that will lead to the construction and preservation of about 300 affordable housing units.

The county has long sought to preserve housing there because residents have said that they would not be able to afford to live at Buckingham if the area is redeveloped, so officials brokered a deal that gives the developer the right to build additional housing elsewhere on the site in exchange for preserving some of Buckingham's units.

Buckingham Village is home to hundreds of low- and moderate-income families, many of them Hispanic, who pay about $1,070 a month in rent.

Under the plan, the county will agree to permit the landowner, a partnership of Paradigm Development and UBS, to add 257 apartments and townhouse units to the north Arlington neighborhood.

The owner will demolish 317 units, and many residents of those units will be moved to other buildings on site or other properties with affordable units.

The plan will allow the county to expand the Buckingham historic district to incorporate what is known as Village 3, an area bounded by George Mason Drive, North Thomas Street, North Pershing Drive and Fourth Street. The county will buy that parcel for $32.1 million.

The area known as Village 1, bounded by Pershing, Henderson Road and George Mason, will be redeveloped as apartments and townhouses with a park in the middle.

The parcel known as Village 2, bounded by George Mason and North Thomas, will be redeveloped as townhouses.

Before the deal, the property owner would have been able to build 613 units on villages 1 and 3, so the redevelopment plan restricts the potential scale of the projects.

The county essentially traded density in one part of the parcel for lower density elsewhere.

"The plan addresses the preservation of affordable housing, historic designation and preservation of the community, permitting as many people as possible to stay there," said Ken Aughenbaugh, director of housing for Arlington County.

The developer, Stan Sloter, president of Paradigm, characterized the plan as a win-win situation. It has been the subject of a year and a half of intense negotiations between county officials and the property owner.

"I think it's a really unique project, quite different than it would have been," he said. "The community's objective was to avoid a sea of townhouses and preserve the housing."

County officials stressed that many details remain to be worked out but praised the effort to achieve goals on so many fronts simultaneously. "It is a visionary plan," said County Board member Barbara A. Favola (D).

The $32.1 million outlay to preserve part of the Buckingham Village apartment complex as affordable housing is thought to be one of the largest such expenditures to protect moderate-income housing in the region and reflects the concerns of local governments, including Arlington's, about the difficulties that ordinary families face as housing costs rise.

"That's tremendous," said Paul DesJardin, chief of housing and planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "To Arlington's credit, this is one of the most ambitious projects recently."

Other jurisdictions are also ponying up big sums to save what they call "workforce" housing, distinct from public housing for the very poor.

Last year, Fairfax County agreed to pay $49.5 million to buy Crescent Apartments in Reston, and it paid $34.5 million to buy the Madison Ridge complex on Rydell Road in western Fairfax County.