After six months of meetings, Alexandria’s Waterfront Plan Work Group finally released its recommendations for the reshaping of the city’s iconic waterfront, and it’s calling on the city to revise some portions of its existing redevelopment plan as the city council slowly moves toward a vote.
But the work group still didn’t reach consensus on some of the major issues surrounding Alexandria’s waterfront plan – among them, how much development should be allowed on the waterfront and how the city should fund the plan.
Debate over the waterfront plan came to a head earlier this fall when a group of residents called the Citizens for an Alternate Alexandria Waterfront Plan released their own redevelopment plan. Though city staff summarily rejected that plan, the work group’s report addresses some of the residents’ concerns.
The work group, which includes community members and local government officials, couldn’t agree on whether Alexandria should allow large hotels along the waterfront or on how dense waterfront development should be, issues the residents’ group raised months ago.
“It was never an expectation that the work group would come to consensus on all these issues,” said group member Nate Macek. “Our role was to highlight where the areas of agreement and disagreement are, and that’s what we did.”
The work group is adamantly against the city using eminent domain – the act of seizing private lands for public use – to acquire waterfront property. And it said the city should devise a more cohesive design for the waterfront rather than the looser framework outlined in its current plan.
The work group also recommended that the city commission several studies on the waterfront itself, including traffic and parking assessments.
“I think there will be probably some changes [to the city’s waterfront plan], some things strengthened, some things reviewed,” said Alexandria city councilman Paul Smedberg, who was also a member of the waterfront work group. “There’s a lot there that people don’t agree with and a lot they think would be really good with the community.”
Andrew Macdonald, chairman of the residents’ group, said the work group highlighted issues his group has been concerned about for months.
“Basically it’s what we’ve been saying since day one – these issues are there, they haven’t considered the community’s views properly and they need to do it before they rezone the waterfront,” he said.
