APA recognizes redevelopment project in Shirlington, Virginia
The redevelopment nearly doubled the land area and more than tripled the density in Shirlington. Photo Arlington Economic Development.
Winter 2008
Planner Spotlight
Creating an Improved Urban Village: The Redevelopment of Shirlington, Virginia
By Terry F. Holzheimer, FAICP
Imagine a block-long street lined with restaurants and local retailers, a place that is crowded on evenings and weekends with people drawn to one of the few art house movie theaters left anywhere — and then more than double it. That is what Arlington, Virginia's economic development planners did in the Village at Shirlington. In the process, a new state-of-the-art library was added, along with a new home for a highly successful regional theater company, both housed in a landmark theater-library complex. In addition, we added five new residential buildings with 644 units, a 142-room hotel, 42,000 square feet of retail space, a 195,000 square foot office building, two parking garages with nearly 1,500 spaces, and an urban transit station. All of this replaced an abandoned big box store and acres of parking lots. The new Village at Shirlington has become one of Arlington's most popular re-envisioned downtowns. The process Arlington took to get there was a long...read more here.
