Arlington Looks to Approve Massive Rosslyn Plaza Redevelopment

• March 7, 2016
• 1 Comment

by UrbanTurf Staff

A new rendering for the redevelopment of Rosslyn Plaza.

One of the biggest redevelopment plans on the boards for Northern Virginia will go before the Arlington County Board this coming weekend.

Rosslyn Plaza is currently a 7.65 acre site on the east side of Rosslyn (map) that consists of office and residential buildings constructed in the 1960s and 70s, as well as the Spectrum Theatre.

Conceptual rendering for the plaza.

Vornado/Charles E. Smith and Gould Property Company have been working on plans to completely redevelop the site with a series of new office and residential buildings, a hotel and a large public plaza. The timeline for the redevelopment is roughly 25 years.

The redevelopment will go before the County Board on Saturday, and the staff report is recommending that the Board approve the rezoning request for the property, as well as adopt the ordinance to approve the development site plan for the project, which would be done in phases, as outlined below.

Phase 1 — Construction of an office building on the south side of the site.
Phases 2 and 3 — Construction of an office building, residential building and public plaza in the middle of the site.
Phases 4 and 5 — Construction of an office building and residential building on the north end of the site.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/arlington_county_board_looks_to_approve_massive_rosslyn_plaza_redevelopment/10954

1 Comment

1. skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 5:20 pm on Tuesday March 8, 2016:
   It's hard to believe that so much square footage of redevelopment, with presumably high projected rents/sales prices, could be so lacking in architectural ambition or interest. I guess a curved wall here and there is supposed to generate excitement? This might make sense, given that the two existing towers to the north of this site (Potomac Tower and Deloitte) gain interest and a modest sense of place from curved fronts hugging the curve of the freeway. But the freeway runs straight in front of this site! As always in Arlington, the planning looks very solid. Notably the new pedestrian bridge which presumably connects down to Roosevelt Island. But the architecture and landscape architecture are unimaginative, to say the least. Landscape architecture in particular nowadays is doing such exciting things--exciting but also widely popular. You'd never know that from the plaza shown here, certainly among the most boring anyone has seen in years. Oh, Arlington, what have you done to create such a culture of banal architecture? And, UrbanTurf, who are the designers behind this? Developers don't just pull renderings out of nowhere.