Alexandria's Draft Duke Street Plan Can't Promise to Keep Your Grocery Store. Here's What It Can Do.

"The City is not able to require that certain businesses stay in their locations." That sentence comes from the City of Alexandria's own FAQ on the draft Duke Street Land Use Plan. The city follows it with an example that will matter to anyone who shops on the corridor: "landlords may decide not to renew commercial leases when the current lease terminates and businesses may opt to relocate, close, or re-configure."

City staff released the full draft at Patrick Henry Recreation Center on Tuesday night, Sept. 29. It is the first update to the corridor's land-use guidance since 1992, and it lays out a 20-year vision for about four miles of Duke Street. Most coverage so far has summarized it as heights, parks and housing. If you live near Foxchase, Quaker Hill or Seminary Hill, the more useful way to read the draft is through what it can't control. It can't pick tenants or force anyone to redevelop. What it can do is attach conditions to what property owners are allowed to propose, and those conditions are the part still open to comment until Nov. 13.

The two shopping centers get permission, not a plan

The Shoppes at Foxchase and Alexandria Commons are the two retail centers most people on this stretch use every week. Both are named in the draft as places where mixed-use redevelopment could happen. When the city ran its Duke Street Business Passport Program this spring, the businesses that signed up included Harris Teeter at 4641 Duke Street, Cortado Cafe, La Casa Restaurant and Local Infusion at Foxchase. At Alexandria Commons they included Kung Fu Kitchen, Backyard Bird Feeder, Nova Eye Care and PHD Salon Spa.

The FAQ says the plan "does not contemplate changing" either center away from a commercial center with groceries, cafes and restaurants. What it does is let the property owner propose a future mixed-use project with housing added. The draft names grocery stores and neighborhood-serving retail as priorities for both sites. A priority and a requirement are different things. The city can regulate general categories of use like "retail" or "restaurant," but it says it can't dictate which specific grocery store, cafe or salon goes where.

The same is true for Alexandria Commons. At the August community meeting, Jeff Farner, deputy director of Planning and Zoning, said the city intends to keep significant retail there, including a grocery store, and also said a land-use plan can't require it. Any redevelopment would trigger community meetings with Quaker Hill. A proposed park on the north side of the site means new buildings would not sit right against the property line.

So the plan works through the gate it sets, not the outcome it hopes for. Who ends up in a storefront depends on leases and owners. What the city can actually set is the shape of a building, where it sits, and what it has to give back.

Where the draft does hold a line

Once you read the plan as a set of conditions, its firmer commitments are easier to spot. These are the places where the city wrote rules instead of hopes:

• Wheeler Avenue and Colvin Street stay a Small Business Area. The city declined to allow housing there and wrote that residential uses "could potentially displace these businesses from the City entirely," because rents are lower and the light-industrial buildings are hard to find elsewhere in Alexandria. That covers businesses like Port City Brewing at 3950 Wheeler Avenue, Handy Bikes on Wheeler, and Dogtopia and Frolic Dogs on Colvin.
• Luckett Field has a condition attached. Two options for the field remained in the working recommendations. Option B, which would reconfigure the surrounding area for development, applies only if another location for the field is secured first.
• Extra height costs affordable housing. The draft caps most redevelopment along Duke Street at 85 feet. Taller buildings at Foxchase and Mason at Van Dorn are tied to affordable housing. In the Opportunity Areas, new development must set aside 10 percent of any residential floor area above base zoning as on-site committed affordable units. In August, Farner described the approach for Mason at Van Dorn and Foxchase as lower buildings at the edges next to existing neighborhoods, stepping up toward the middle and toward Duke and Van Dorn streets.
• New public space comes tied to redevelopment. The draft envisions about nine acres of new parks and open space, four miles of bicycle facilities, 1.25 miles of trails and 1.8 miles of new streets over 20 years. The specific links include a greenway under the Telegraph Road bridge connecting Witter Field to King Street Metro, an underpass one resident called scary at the August meeting. They also include turning the Liebach Bridge near Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library into a pedestrian-only bridge with bike and scooter access.

Each of these is a condition on a future proposal. That makes them worth commenting on now, because once the plan is adopted, the conditions become the standard every application is measured against.

One or two buildings a year

The pace of change shapes how much any of this shows up in daily life. When residents asked about population growth in August, Farner gave a rough estimate of one to two new buildings a year over the plan's 20-year life. The city's FAQ points the same way. It says the amount of development in the Opportunity Areas "generally corresponds to the absorption potential of the Corridor" and that "there is generally not a market for development throughout the whole corridor."

The plan also doesn't make anyone build. The FAQ says it won't override existing approvals or require property owners to redevelop or change their current use. Where it does call for specific action, though, it acts as an overlay that takes precedence over the existing smaller area plans.

Meanwhile, the larger changes at the western end are already underway. The first buildings at WestEnd, on the former Landmark Mall site, and the anchor Inova Alexandria Hospital at Landmark are both expected in 2028. Along most of the corridor, change under this plan will come gradually, one application at a time, and each application will be judged against the conditions above.

The traffic argument, in the city's own numbers

Traffic drew the most pushback at the August meeting, and the city's projections show why.

The city says the numbers barely move because housing generates fewer trips than the commercial uses it would replace. Farner said much of today's congestion is regional traffic cutting between I-495 and I-395 by way of Seminary Road, Quaker Lane and Telegraph Road. As local trips grow, the city expects those regional drivers to go back to the interstates. The city's supporting evidence is Potomac Yard, where Richmond Highway traffic fell from about 41,000 vehicles a day in 2005 to roughly 25,000 in 2022 as development there approached 5 million square feet. The FAQ also points to new east-west routes and more access points to Duke Street for neighborhoods to the north, which would take pressure off roads like Yale Drive and Cambridge Road.

At the Sept. 29 release, the two positions sounded like this:

"Once these different neighborhoods are built out along the corridor, that will put more local people on the road, and the congestion solution this group has is not to worry about that because when we put more people in cars that actually live along the corridor, it will stop cut-through traffic." — Carter Flemming, former chair of the Alexandria Federation of Civic Associations and the Seminary Hill Association

"We think the streets should be more for city residents and local trips versus the regional trips." — Christian Brandt, city urban planner, as reported by ALXnow

Flemming's main objection is how the plan relates to the Duke Street Transitway, which will add more than four miles of bus rapid transit lanes by 2029. The city's position is that the Transitway concept City Council adopted in summer 2023 is built into the land-use framework but won't be reopened in this process. A north-south connection from Eisenhower Avenue to Duke Street is also outside this plan. The FAQ says the plan neither recommends nor rules it out, and that any such link would need its own study. Comments about bus lanes or a cross-rail connector belong in those processes, not this one.

Where the window is still open

Public comment runs on the city's Engagement Hub through Friday, Nov. 13. That's about two weeks later than the Oct. 28 deadline first announced. Staff said comments received after Nov. 13 will still go to the Planning Commission and City Council, but they can't be folded into the revised draft that goes on the docket. "This is still very much a working draft," Farner said at the release, as reported by Alexandria Brief.

The project page lists six Zoom office hours before the deadline:

The city also takes input by email to Christian Brandt and by phone at 703-746-3859. The city's public meeting calendar lists a Planning Commission public hearing on Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. and a City Council public hearing on Dec. 12 at 9:30 a.m. Agendas for those dates hadn't been posted when we checked, so confirm the Duke Street item is on the docket before planning around either one.

The comments most likely to shape the revised draft are about the conditions: how high the bands step up at Foxchase and Mason at Van Dorn, whether the 10 percent affordable set-aside is the right number, whether Luckett Field's protection is firm enough, and what the Alexandria Commons park needs to be. Farner has already shown the draft can change in response to comments. In August he agreed to study whether the 13-foot sidewalks planned for retail streets could become multi-use paths after two residents pointed out there was nowhere for e-bikes and scooters to ride legally.

Derek has worked on enough older homes and blocks along the city's corridors to know that a land-use plan shapes what gets built next to you for decades. If you want to talk through what the Foxchase or Alexandria Commons conditions could mean for your street, Derek Mathew Cole is glad to go through the draft maps with you. Schedule a free consultation.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.