Clarendon Construction - June 2010, part 2

For the second post this month on this topic, I wanted to give an update on a project that has been in the works for a year or two, with preconstruction activities going on since the fall of 2009.  But activities have really picked up in the last couple of months, so it's time to add this Clarendon project to the list.

From a development standpoint, the project, called The Views, has some interesting aspects to it - but it's also kind of amusing; not without controvery; and in my opinion, ugly.  Sorry for that.  Well, not really.

The plan is to develop an "airspace" building over an old church in Arlington, with eight to ten floors of residential above two floors that will continue to be used as a church.  In a dense urban environment such as we have in this Arlington neighborhood, squeezing more and more use out of the available square footage is inevitable.  It's just that sometimes, an attempt to be creative heads off in a truly unfortunate direction.  This project is simply an assault on one's sense of aesthetics.

The in progress photos show the demolition of the old sanctuary, leaving the portal into the old church standing for now.  One photo was taken at ground level looking into the lot, the other is the view out of my office windows.  The ground level photo reminds me of a bombed out old cathedral I once saw at a monestary in Kiev.  The project itself brings to mind a similar "church +" project in the Rosslyn area that my friends and I call "gas 'n' god" - the sanctuary in that case being built in the airspace over a gas station.

The project, sene in the developer's concept materials here, is offset one block from the others that I have been tracking in this series, and involves building a new sanctuary and other church associated areas on the first floor.  A separate entry and core building functions will be built within the footprint to support the residential tower that will start on the third floor above the church.

For controversy, this project isn't short of it.  Because of the close association with the church, and the desire to offer this housing to low income residents, the hearings and communications have led to confusion about whether the subsidies for building these apartments might actually benefit the church.  Courts have decided that due to the structure of the project - the two uses will actually become condominiums that share the property, the developer has been able to segregate funding and future ownership so that no public funds are involved in the new church use.

I think it's a creative solution to the density problems we'll continue to face with the continued urbanization of this area in Arlington.  The real estate - the land here - was valued at almost $15 million when planning got underway.  Those values are going to drive new uses...I just wish in this case they could have done a better job designing the project.