Category: Land use & Development
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Virginia’s New Suburbia
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s suburbs are undergoing profound demographic changes with tremendous implications for politics and real-estate development strategy, argues Greg Weatherford in Virginia Business magazine. The suburbs are less white than they used to be. Northern Virginia, unsurprisingly, is leading the way. As of 2018, 49.4% of Northern Virginia residents identified as members…
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Richmond’s Pulse Stimulates Mid-Rise Development
by James A. Bacon Sometimes it seems like the City of Richmond can’t do anything right. City Council just nixed a $1.5 billion redevelopment plan for the Navy Hill district in downtown. And no one can figure out where, or how, to build a new minor league baseball stadium. But the city has hit a…
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Consistency? Seek it Not at the General Assembly
The Virginia Constitution grants exemption from local real estate taxes for veterans with 100% service-related disability and for the Gold Star families of those killed in action, a move enthusiastically endorsed by voters in 2010. But in a House Finance Committee subcommittee this morning Virginia’s local governments presented the General Assembly with a bill. The…
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Why Navy Hill?
The most controversial issue facing Richmond City Council these days is the proposed Navy Hill project, a $1.5 billion urban renovation project in downtown Richmond backed by the NH District Corp., Dominion Energy CEO Tom Farrell, and Mayor Levar Stoney. Backers argue that transforming under-utilized land, much of it surface parking lots, into mixed use…
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Now the Cherokee Want to Build a Casino in Virginia
by James A. Bacon Indian ancestral lands are sacred — sacred, I tell you! Until they’re not. As is apparently the case in Washington County, where the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the vast majority of whom live in North Carolina, have proposed to build a casino. The eastern Cherokee, who operate the Harrah’s Cherokee…
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Bacon Bits: $$$$$ Edition
They didn’t ask this question until now? Will the wave of Amazon-inspired development in the Pentagon City area of Arlington County overwhelm the region’s transportation network? “Arlington planners, and nervous neighbors, want to know,” reports the Washington Business Journal. Some neighborhood groups are wary that the point of the planning review is to clear the…
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Chesterfield’s Slow-Motion Suburban Suicide
by James A. Bacon The traffic engineers, it appears, have won. Chesterfield County is doubling down on suburban sprawl with plans to build a series of “superstreets” at a cost of tens of millions of dollars over the next decade. While the massive infrastructure investment likely will reduce traffic accidents and improve traffic flow on…
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How Walkable Urbanism Is Guiding NoVa Growth and Redevelopment
by James A. Bacon Between Amazon, Micron Technology, and smaller deals too innumerable to list, Northern Virginia continues to dominate the economic action in Virginia. In previous business cycles, economic growth unleashed disconnected, low-density, auto-centric development that served immediate needs for office space but literally embedded in asphalt, concrete and steel one of the nation’s…
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More Restrictions Proposed for Culpeper Solar Farms
by James A. Bacon Culpeper County prohibits construction of solar farms on Civil War battlefields. Now a proposal under consideration by the Board of Supervisors would discourage large solar projects adjacent to battlefield land held in historic easement, reports the Culpeper Star-Exponent. And that restriction is just one of many changes to the county’s Utility…
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Richmond’s World of Secrecy and Collusion
by Peter Galuszka There’s long been the “Virginia Way” of ruling oligarchs making decisions in backrooms while leaving the public out of the picture. But then there’s also the “Richmond Way,” which is the same thing on steroids. The key focus today is the so-called Navy Hill District Corporation, a group headed by Dominion Energy…
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Should Virginia Beach Buy Out Flood-Prone Properties at Fair Market Value?
by James A. Bacon As Hurricane Dorian bears down on the South Atlantic Coast, the Virginian-Pilot reports that Virginia Beach officials are considering a program to buy out residents who want to move out of homes that have flooded or face a risk of flooding. The land would be converted into parks, planted with trees,…
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Bacon Bits: Numerological Edition
$6.5 billion. That’s how much Dominion Energy estimates it will cost Virginia ratepayers if the state signs up with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce CO2 emissions. The utility said it would have to shutter four coal-fired power plants and replace their generating capacity with additional solar, natural gas,…
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The Power and Whimsy of Public Art
I’ve been traveling a fair amount this summer, and I’ve seen a lot of public art. I’m a big believer in public art, but I have definite views on what constitutes good art and lousy art. Good art inspires, uplifts, delights, celebrates, or animates the emotions. Bad art just sits there, causing you to scratch…
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Seattle’s Pocket Parks
I’m back in Richmond, batteries recharged. Many thanks to Steve and Dick for keeping the fires of rebellion stoked in my absence. Laura and I visited the great Northwest, a region extending from Seattle and Victoria (British Columbia) in the south to Juneau and Glacier Bay in the north. As always, I kept my eyes…
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Density as an Answer
It seems that our leader, Jim Bacon, is on the cutting edge of new thinking about how to address the rising cost of housing. (Of course, this is no surprise to BR readers.) An article in yesterday’s New York Times describes how planners, economists, and environmentalists across the country have begun to advocate more density.…