Comments to Alexandria City Council - 18 October 2025

18 October 2025

Mayor Gaskins, Vice Mayor Bagley, and members of Council,

As the Alexandria leadership team for YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, we are excited to see three significant housing developments on today’s docket, and we ask you to vote yes on all of them. Together, these developments will add 473 desperately needed new homes to Alexandria.

Docket item 7, 601 Wythe Street, will convert an aging office building to 18 new homes in Old Town North. It’s exciting to see Alexandria continuing to lead in office-to-residential conversion, and this development will turn more of our underutilized 1980s office building stock into opportunities to live in our city. It’s worth noting that a Special Use Permit is required to build a residential building in the CRMU-X zone. A residential building in a residential zone should not be considered a special use. We hope you will consider removing this requirement, and more broadly, simplifying our zones so that housing is legal everywhere in Alexandria.

Docket item 12, West End Block D, will add 275 new homes amid the jobs and opportunities coming to the former Landmark Mall site. This development will help meet the growing demand for housing and ensure that middle-income Alexandrians have the opportunity to live and thrive in our city’s newest neighborhood.

Docket item 13, the Braddock West development, will add 180 new homes across the street from the Metro station, including 14 committed affordable homes. In addition to adding much-needed homes and retail space near transit, the development will benefit its neighbors by significantly improving stormwater management and adding a new mid-block crossing to the station.

We also would like to note that two of the developments on today’s docket require a Special Use Permit for a parking reduction – including the one that is across the street from a Metro station. In fact, of the 34 apartment and condo developments approved from 2022 to now, 18 of them (more than half) required a SUP for a parking reduction. We hope you will consider legalizing parking flexibility by eliminating the current mandates, so that property owners can assess the unique conditions of each location to determine how many parking spaces are actually needed to rent or sell homes.

We hope Alexandria will continue to welcome new homes of all types, all price points, and in all parts of our city to address our regional housing crisis and make our city better for everyone.

YIMBYs of Northern Virginia Alexandria leads