To the Editor:
Despite the long and tortuous process that has led us to Plan D for the waterfront, it has reverted to the intentions of the few who met together in 2006. A troika of those still at the helm of development in the City of Alexandria: a well-known financier, the city’s lead outside legal counsel, and its favored developer. The result? A fully loaded waterfront designed for maximum revenue generation from residential housing and tourism. The Historic District, which includes the waterfront, is now considered merely “context”, like the theatrical backdrop of a theme park.
The waterfront’s Plan D, which is now before City Council for approval, is a mirror image — down to the oversized plaza and fountain — of the urban renewal design that brought us the gutted (and wholly unsuccessful) center of Old Town. To this day Market Square and its neighboring plaza to the west remain unfulfilled — mostly empty. They were intended to accommodate up to 1,500 people, standing, for civic rallies and other events. The architecture surrounding is banal beyond belief. There is almost nothing that separates this from the disastrous design that is Plan D.
Once again the vital feature that is Old Town, its historic character, is being washed clean by the same banal and unimaginative treatment that comes from developer-dominated design. Even InterContinental’s (Carr) proposed hotel is a mishmash of features that only a developer could love — it has everything and nothing. The preliminary drawings for Robinson Terminal South are lifted wholesale from Ford’s Landing and Rivergate, both by EYA. Their “open space” is never used as such by either residents at the condos or visitors, because they are cramped and offer views of, well … condo corridors.
Most egregious is the repeated polling and time wasting soirees that were held with the residents of Old Town, who must live with the consequences of this overly ambitious and ill-conceived waterfront Plan D. Their hope, too, was for replacing the Post’s industrial terminals with parks, arts, and a living waterfront (an expanded Seaport Foundation and tidied up historic Old Dominion Boat Club). Instead, these early hopes have become narrow alleyways and the Fitzgerald Plaza a hardscaped hub for commercial boats. Waterfront Park has been diced up. Ironically, the proposed civic building will be glass — to afford views of the river. The flood mitigation plan intends for water to be trapped behind the floodwall, until the river naturally recedes … and then the stormwater runoff is to be pumped directly into the Potomac in violation of the Clean Water and Chesapeake Bay Preservation Acts.
The design, Plan D, from north to south is a disaster. The core is large, hard and hot … saturated with large restaurants with no parking, designed for and massively programmed events. Green space in the south, as limited as it is, is crammed with … bocce courts? And the most naturally endowed place on the riverfront, Oronoco Bay Park is scheduled for “cleanup and entertainment.”
Oronoco Bay is now naturalizing, so that wildlife is returning … fox, osprey, red diving ducks, turtles, redwing blackbirds, snakes, and sanctuary for 11 baby ducks. What happened to Laurie Olin’s uplifting and wonderful vision for a naturalized shoreline? Doesn’t Plan D already do enough to disenfranchise residents?
Kathryn Papp, Alexandria