Arlington County’s new plan for an apartment community on Columbia Pike is expected to house 122 low-income apartments, double the number of low-income units the county had planned for in a previous years.
In the plan submitted by the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing, which the county selected as developer for the project, every apartment is designated for families earning at or less than 60 percent of the area median income – about $60,000 per household.
Ten percent of the apartments will be held strictly for families who earn less than 40 percent of median area income.
Until recently, the apartment’s fate was tied directly to the Arlington Mill Community Center, which the county has sought to rebuild for nearly a decade. The county board recently voted to split the project into two phases after a previous agreement with the Public Private Alliance was scrapped.
The developer failed to secure funds for the project’s market-rate apartments in 2009, and the plan stalled, according to Maureen Markham, development specialist with the county’s Housing Division.
The original designs were for two buildings of mixed-income apartments, with one of the buildings housing the community center on several of the bottom floors. Only 61 units would have been for low-income housing.
“Given what happened with the last plan, we thought it would be a safer bet to go with the all-affordable housing option,” said Markham.
Development costs are estimated at $30 million. APAH plans to apply for financing and tax credits from the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
Now that the county has decided to move forward with projects separately, both are scheduled to begin construction within the next two years. The county will keep ownership of the land and negotiate a lease with APAH – it’s developing the community center on its own.
The announcement comes on the heels of a recent report from the Columbia Pike Land Use and Housing Study that recommends the county retain or replace all of the 3,200 affordable housing units within the next 30 years.
