Arlington County Approves 20-Story, 453-Unit Development for Crystal City

• January 26th 2015

by Lark Turner

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A twenty-story, 453-unit residential complex planned for Crystal City got the go-ahead from the Arlington County Board on Saturday. The apartment and condominium project from developer LCOR will take the place of a vacant office building at 400 Army-Navy Drive (map) known as the “Paper Clip” building.

The Arlington County Board said LCOR’s plan was in keeping with the Crystal City Sector Plan that governs development in the area. The development, which will rise in two towers above a shared three-story base, will have one parking space per unit.

“It will bring new life and more housing into an Arlington neighborhood that we are working hard to reinvigorate with a better mix of uses, better transportation options, and more and better open space,” Arlington County Board Chair Mary Hynes said in a release.

LCOR’s Harmar Thompson told UrbanTurf a little over a year ago that the building’s articulated glass facades would take advantage of the view over DC.

“You look at those buildings, and they’re nice, but they’re certainly pretty homogenous,” he said at the time. “Our goal was to set ourselves apart and do a design that you typically don’t see in Crystal City and Pentagon City, a building that has a lot more glass, that has a lot of articulations in the facade.”

Harmar said the building, designed by SK&I Design Group, would help serve as a bridge between Crystal and Pentagon Cities. It’s near two large residential developments from Vornado: PenPlace and Metropolitan 45, which will include a Whole Foods. The site’s a half-mile from both the Pentagon and Pentagon City Metro Stations, and three-quarters of a mile from the Crystal City Metro Station.

An earlier obstacle to the building’s approval, its position adjacent to a planned streetcar maintenance building, was removed when the county moved to cancel the planned streetcar project in late 2014.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/arlington_county_approves_20-story_453-unit_development_for_crystal_city/9448.