Grade Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz with an “A” for effort but perhaps a “Gentleman’s C” when it comes to bringing clarity to the long-term use of a big parcel on North Quincy Street Road that is giving fits to neighbors in the Ballston-Virginia Square area.
Using a July 23 public hearing to permit parking of 30 Arlington Transit (ART) buses on the site for another year, Schwartz attempted to expound on comments he made in January about the long-term future of that site.
Back then, the county manager said the county government’s new ART operations facility in South Arlington possibly will be unable to house all buses if the system converts to an electric fleet.
“We will have to be looking at other places in the county,” Schwartz said in January. “This site [on North Quincy Street] could be a potential location.”
The GazetteLeader described the almost offhand comment as a “bombshell” that likely would further rupture relations between the county government and nearby residents of the temporary parking site at 1425 North Quincy.
So on July 23, Schwartz tried again. The county manager said he planned to do everything he could to avoid using the Quincy Street site for the bus fleet over the long haul.
But, he added, “I’m not going to make a promise to that. I’m not saying it’s going to be on Quincy, but it has to be somewhere.”
The county government in 2017 purchased the 6.1-acre Quincy Street site, one of the relatively few large parcels zoning for industrial use in the county. But ever since county leaders in 2022 voted to use the parcel for bus parking, relations with neighbors have been frayed – including dueling lawsuits.
At the July 23 hearing, resident Tom Viles accused the county of “abuse of court resources” to take on residents and the neighborhood civic association. County officials later withdrew the suit, but the damage to trust was done.
Randy Painter, president of the Ballston-Virginia Square Civic Association, said relations have improved between the civic association and county government since the departure of County Board members he left unspecified but could refer to Christian Dorsey and Katie Cristol, who each left office last year.
The 2024 board, which includes new arrivals Susan Cunningham and Maureen Coffey, is working in a way that “helps to reset our relationship and to conduct it with mutual respect,” Painter said.
That the temperature may have lowered a bit was could be inferred by the fact that only four speakers from the neighborhood, including civic-association president Painter, took part in the hearing. But Schwartz acknowledged that county leaders “need to do a better job of re-setting the relationship we have with the neighborhood.”
County Board members on July 23 voted unanimously, as expected, to extend use of the Quincy Street site for another year. But several members pressed county staff to get the buses moved to the new facility in Green Valley/Shirlington sooner than July 2025.
“We would love to be off of this site – the earlier the better,” Coffey said.
Those whose job it is to get the new facility operational said they wanted the same thing. As to whether it could be accomplished, they were noncommittal.
“There’s a lot of planning to do to make that work,” Department of Environmental Services director Greg Emanuel said. While hoping to beat the deadline, “sometimes things go wrong at the end of construction,” he said.
To get the new facility online, bus parking must be ready along with operations and maintenance facilities, the latter being relocated from Edsall Road in Alexandria. County Board member Takis Karantonis said it needed to be a priority to get the buses moved from Quincy Street, and he wanted that done “tomorrow” – the day after the facility is operational.
“Our priority is to get the buses moved,” said Lynn Rivers, the county government’s transit bureau chief.
Acting on a request from County Board member Susan Cunningham, it appears that board members will select one of their own to serve as a liaison to the neighborhood specifically on this issue. While there was no decision made from the dais on which board member would get the task,” we can certainly work that out,” County Board Chairman Libby Garvey said.
When County Board members voted in May 2022 to use the Quincy Street space for temporary ART-bus storage, they required that county staff return for a public hearing in a year’s time so board members could again hear from the public. County staff, however, apparently didn’t remember, nor did anyone else – May 2023 came and went without a hearing, with the error only being detected late in the year and the hearing belatedly held in January 2024.
At that meeting, County Board members directed that the matter come back for further review in July. This time, nobody forgot.
