Flexible-Hotel Conversion Requested for a Few Arlington Apartment Complexes

• January 13th 2021

by Nena Perry-Brown

Amid low demand and apartment vacancies spurred by COVID, a few buildings in Arlington are seeking to switch things up.

Dittmar has applied to Arlington County for a minor site plan amendment to permit the addition of hotel use, which would be applied to 25 of the vacant units in each of three buildings the company manages. 

If approved, the proposal would turn roughly 5% of the units in each of Courtland Towers (579 units total), Randolph Towers (523 units total), and Virginia Square Towers (534 units total) into "flexible" units.

With the site plan amendment, the landlord would be able to rent those units as either furnished short-term rentals of fewer than 30 days, or with leases of various terms longer than 30 days. The applications suggest optimism for future short-term rental demand.

"Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Applicant has experienced unprecedented levels of vacancy in residential units. It believes that, as business travel begins to return to the region in the future, there will be a demand for leases of furnished units for less than 30 days. The Applicant seeks to serve this group of people by converting a portion of the residential units on the Property to Flexible Units to allow for a more socially-distanced temporary stay in Arlington."

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/flexible-hotel-conversion-requested-for-a-few-arlington-apartment-complexes/17741.