Arlington, Alexandria Election Results Could Affect Development
Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille lost his write-in campaign to keep his seat on Tuesday, falling again to Vice Mayor Allison Silberberg on Tuesday, this time in the general election. So, if you don't live in Alexandria, why should you care? Because Silberberg ran on an anti-development, slow-growth platform, and the voters responded.
Euille and the Alexandria City Council's willingness to give developers economic development packages to lure GSA tenants—the NSF and the TSA in the last few years—has worked in some regards, but the high pace of growth in the city has caused pushback. Silberberg promised to slow down growth, according to the Washington Post.
Arlington elected two new County Board members on Tuesday, but Alexandria's northernly neighbor has the opposite problem: commercial vacancy rates are still sky high, although they're starting to drop. Christian Dorsey and Katie Cristol will serve on the county's board starting in January, and those vacancy rates are close to the top of Dorsey's priority list.
“If we think about what makes Arlington Arlington, it’s having a commercial sector that humming a lot more than it is right now,” Dorsey told ARLnow.com after the votes were counted. Arlington offered an incentive package to CEB when it decided to stay in Rosslyn, and it's not hard to predict more of the same in the future to try to fill the holes in Arlington's office sector. [WaPo]
