The County is wrapping up the Pentagon City Planning Study, and despite being painted as “green” and “biophilic”, would result in less access to green open space in exchange for significantly more density, leaving us one of the most inequitably served communities in Arlington for access to Open Public Space.

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More People with Less Green Space

New Parks? Nope. Just Easements over Existing Publicly Accessible Green Spaces

The Study states not once, but twice, that “the plan enables at least five new acres of new parks and plazas distributed across Pentagon City, plus expansion of Virginia Highlands Park by at least one acre.” PCPS Draft, pg 92

In reality, there is no added substantive green space. In fact, residents will lose access to existing green space while increasing density significantly.

The PCPS touts “new parks” but they are actually just easements over existing green, and publicly accessible green spaces. The existing Grace Murray Hopper Park instead is proposed to be lost to the developer and will be built on. 

It is clear by just looking at what exists now vs what is proposed that acres of new park space is just sleight of hand with no real increases:

 

Virginia Highlands Park: No Mention of Casual Use Space Needs? 

Virginia Highlands Park is part of the scope of the PCPS. The PCPS discusses adding a school on it and a need to use it for pedestrians and passageways, but goes out of its way to ignore repeated needs to address open park spaces in the plan and even more specifically at Virginia Highlands Park. 

There is no acknowledgement in the PCPS that for a year of engagement, hundreds of community members in public meetings, written comments, appointed representatives from the Civic Association and even in community surveys, all expressed a clear and strong need for open park community green spaces (not sidewalk planting beds in green ribbons) and not spaces that are leftover from their primary uses as other facilities. Nowhere in the PCPS does it acknowledge this need expressed by 22202 residents and by County residents at large as reported in the Public Spaces Master Plan.  

And at the July 2021 public meeting, after nearly 10 months of residents participating and asking that open green space be part of the plan and acknowledged as a need in VHP, Planning Commissioner Elizabeth Gearin reaffirmed what the community and participants have said in the process, that the community had expressed a clear and “specific need” for open green casual uses for many years. 

The PCPS however still failed to incorporate this sentiment into the PCPS. 

Instead it seems that the PCPS intends that the existing parcel fronting the RiverHouse will likely be the only “intentionally designed” open green park space in Virginia Highlands Park to meet the needs of approximately 20k residents. Existing publicly accessible (privately owned) green spaces will be built on. 

 

Expanding the large VHP by using extreme measures, for what? 

“Relocate Joyce to the west south of 15th Street to enable contiguous expansion of Virginia Highlands Park (pg 92)” 

While VHP is 20+ acres already, the PCPS provides no reason that existing publicly accessible green space in front of River House by re-routing Joyce St through a significant incline/hill is beneficial to anyone. In fact, it will cost potentially tens of millions of dollars, it will be more difficult for thousands of existing and new residents at River House to access green space by needing to cross a road, and there has been no reason to explain why this is necessary or an “improvement” despite repeatedly asking staff. 

 

How the County Now Counts “Parks”

Overlaying a public easement on existing publicly accessible green space increases “park land”. However, building on existing publicly accessible, private, green space doesn’t count against the total decrease in accessible green space for the public.

For example, if a development has 5 acres of publicly accessible green space and the County overlays an easement on 1 acre as a “community benefit” and the developer builds on the remaining 4 acres of green space, residents have lost 80% of the space they had, but the County happily counts this as increasing our park space. 

In the PCPS, the County has gone a step further to double count Green Ribbons (sidewalks with planting beds) as both “parks” and transportation elements. These are also now counted as “community benefits” whereas similar features that exist in the County, including in Crystal City, Ballston and elsewhere were not “community benefits.”

 

“Green Ribbon” – It’s Transportation, no It’s a Park, No, actually It’s just a Sidewalk with maybe some Plants and It’s considered a “community benefit” 

The new concept of the “green ribbon” is not new at all. They are described as “typical width of at least 16 feet…(pg 94)” or approximately the size of a living room rug. Of  the 16’+ ft, 8-12 ft are pedestrian passage which will also accommodate “slower-moving cyclists.”

Green Ribbons are sidewalks for pedestrians and even bikes with potentially some trees and planting areas. This is good, and should be the way all our sidewalks look. But what is “new” about this concept is that it is both taking the place of actual “conventional” green space parks and for apparently the first time, they will use these sidewalks as “community benefit” to increase density. 

Staff has been asked repeatedly to provide any kind of example where getting a treed sidewalk in the county anywhere has been considered a sufficient trade-off for increasing density. The only example they have been able to provide is Crystal City Plaza 1. 

Images from the draft Pentagon City Planning Study about Green Ribbons

 

Changing the Definition of Parks to Include Virtually Anything, Including Sidewalks. 

“This framework identifies opportunity for at least ten acres of new public park, plaza, and green space helping people enjoy much more of Arlington’s public space system.” pg 86

“Much of this new space may be more urban in character than conventional park space, shaped as “outdoor rooms” by buildings and mature trees, with paved areas mixed in with low plantings and tree canopy, to accommodate intensive and varied uses within a set of relatively small parks, squares, and plazas dispersed across blocks with high-density mixed-use development.” pg 35

The PCPS now defines essentially any spaces, whether they are concrete plazas, sidewalks, or planting areas next to sidewalks as acceptable replacements for “conventional park space”. 

 

Tree Canopy

At the October 12th PCPS public session, Former Chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission Caroline Haynes, pointed out that the goal of 15% minimum planting areas (pg 56), which include tree canopy, is about the same that exists today in Pentagon City. So it is not a “goal.” And that in general, 15% is extremely low.  Still, the PCPS touts this plan as being “greener.” 

 

Biophilia 

There are no standards for incorporating sustainability into biophilia. Instead, things like images of nature and plastic plants suffice for “biophilic” elements. Former Parks and Rec Chair Haynes expressed concerns about the misrepresentation of the biophilic concepts that are not what the public expects of green and nature-oriented development.

 

Equity in Open Public “Green” Spaces

In 2019, Arlington County articulated a goal of “[ensuring] that our actions and policies implement the County’s vision in an equitable way” through its Equity Resolution. In 2021, the Arlington Civic Federation Parks and Recreation Committee completed a study of equity for unprogrammed, green Open Public Space (OPS) access, one of the most inclusive types of public spaces that exist. To meet Arlington’s equity goals, the study highlights the need for significant additional OPS resources, particularly in lower-income and higher-density areas, where the need for public green spaces is even greater as they are sometimes the only areas for recreation and access to nature. 

According to that study, Pentagon City and Crystal City are already inequitably served among Arlington County with respect to access to open public green space among its current population and density levels. But that inequity with access to open green space for many lower income and elevator building residents is slated to deteriorate even more substantially under the plans articulated so far in the Pentagon City Planning Study — creating conditions where Pentagon City residents will be some of the most inequitably served in the county with access to open public green space and fail to meet Arlington’s equity goals:

The Pentagon City Planning Study Reduces Open Public Green Space

If the plans articulated in the Pentagon City Planning Study materialize, Pentagon City residents—particularly its lower-income residents—will end up with some of the worst access to open public green space in the county…

To evaluate how much new OPS would be needed to maintain comparable [already underserved OPS] access for Pentagon City residents, we evaluated an illustrative scenario in which parks were built, reconfigured, or expanded, and how these changes would affect OPS access under both current population figures as well as the projected population increases. We find that the plans so far articulated within the PCPS fail to meet Arlington’s equity goals….

Even if athletic fields were to be considered Open Public Space (OPS) in the equity analysis, Pentagon City would actually fare even more inequitably served among Arlington residents compared to Arlingtonians and their access to OPS….

https://arlington-analytics.com/papers/OPS22202.pdf

All of the numbers touted by the County with increased park acreage through easements and high rankings in Trust for Public Lands reports mask the failure to acquire park land in the high-density areas like Pentagon City that need it:

Washington Post Opinion: Arlington is lacking in park equity  

Arlington’s high [Trust for Public Land] TPL scores mask a park policy that will not address inequities. Arlington lacks any proposed funding for parkland acquisition and emphasizes expansion of parks in areas with good existing access to nature. Enhancing the TPL’s equity score emphasizing green spaces could motivate cities to invest in public open space, which benefit residents of all socio-demographic groups and physical abilities — the most inherently equitable types of spaces any park can have.

 

An Opaque/Closed Door “Study” of Density but Not of Needs

Ignoring and not reporting feedback

At the Oct 12th public meeting, facilitators and staff presented a summary of the feedback that they had received since the first draft. This summary completely ignored numerous comments and concerns that the facilitators and staff received during the public feedback period. Most of the feedback submitted by the Aurora Highlands rep was not even acknowledged, much less addressed in any revisions of the PCPS. 

When asked why all this feedback was not included in any improvements to the PCPS nor even acknowledged as received, staff said that it was because other comments received countered those or they believed were already resolved. Because staff never posted any of the public feedback or comments, attendees requested that they do so, since these “counter” comments apparently were over-riding numerous others throughout the community. Staff said that they would post the comments, but have not done so yet. 

 

Closed door “meetings” with no recordation. Avoiding “Sunshine laws?” 

The PCPS held numerous focus group “meetings” for major decisions and then asked the community for their “reactions.” By calling these “get togethers” with only very limitedly selected individuals “focus groups”, the County appears to be attempting to avoid Sunshine laws, which mandate that public meetings organized by the government must have meeting minutes and be accessible by the public. Requests to have interested community stakeholders just sit in on meetings were rejected.

 

A “Study” with no Actual “Study” Conducted

The stated PCPS Scope: “The study will help define Pentagon City’s capacity for future growth by evaluating alternative redevelopment scenarios and their resulting impacts on the capacity of the existing, committed, and planned transportation system, infrastructure, public spaces and community facilities.” Pentagon City Planning Study: Scope – Projects & Planning (arlingtonva.us)

This was a Study to see how much density can be achieved and results in saying that between 2x-3x density can be achieved. However, there is no data about the necessary facilities, services, acres of parkland, etc to support this, and instead says that other processes can determine these. The need for some community facilities like schools was finally acknowledged, with the County’s “preferred location” already identified – before a feasibility study has even been started – and despite knowing the “preferred location” at Virginia Highlands Park would displace other high priority community needs for park space, community centers, and libraries. So before we know if all the elements to achieve Livability can be met, staff has determined that significant increased density is achievable.

Staff dismissed and attacked data-driven equity and density studies such as the  Arlington Civic Federation Parks and Recreation Committee Open Public Space Equity study. Requests to put actual numbers on park access and accessibility were repeatedly dismissed, with staff preferring instead to focus on vague “increased quality.”