The Arlington County Board has decided to end negotiations with the property owner of one potential site for the long-planned new Cherrydale Fire Station.
Since the spring, county staffers have been conducting simultaneous negotiations on property near the current Cherrydale Volunteers firehouse owned by Koons Toyota and the Ed Peete Company’s Brompton condominiums.
“The main rationale was that we could get the fire station faster by staying the course at the Koons site,” County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson said.
The Koons site also could accommodate a larger station than could be built on the Brompton site, Ferguson said.
In the four years since the Ed Peete Company began building condos on its property, new residents have moved into the town houses the Peete Company built behind it. They objected to a fire station being built adjacent to them, as they had expected condos, said Brian Bonnet, president of the Cherrydale Citizens Association.
Some of those residents “were vehement in their opposition” and threatened the county with a lawsuit, Bonnet said. But other neighbors preferred that site over the Koons property, Bonnet said.
“There is frustration and disappointment in the broader community,” Bonnet said. “In the end, [the county board members] made the decision they had to make.”
The odyssey to construct the new station began nearly two decades ago. Voters approved a combined $5.26 million in bonds in 1990 and 1994, and additional money in 2004.
Arlington has been working with Koons Toyota for two years, trying to fix a price on property where Koons currently parks some of its cars. The complicating factor slowing the deal was that if Koons provided the land, it needed a garage to store its cars, said Bobby van Druff, the county’s capital program manager.
While the county negotiated with Ed Peete Company, the complications cleared up, Ferguson said. He hopes that construction can begin by the end of the year.
