Well past midnight into Tuesday morning this week, the Falls Church City Council emerged from a lengthy closed session at City Hall and voted unanimously to rank the proposal by Urban Atlantic as the first among three plans for the affordable redevelopment of the Virginia Village subdivision in Falls Church.
The action was the only thing taken up at the late hour. The body quickly moved to adjourn after that.
But the ranking will prove key as the next steps are charted out this fall toward a deal that prospectively massively upgrades the site, adding up to 200 new dwellings at deeply discounted rates on a property that has not been improved since the 80 units there now were built in the early stages in World War II in 1941.
The early Tuesday morning motion was made by Council member Marybeth Connelly, seconded by Vice Mayor Laura Downs, to adopt that the City Council rank the three proposals received for the Virginia Village affordable housing development in the same order as was recommended by the proposal review committee. It further moved that City Council direct staff to develop an interim agreement with the top-ranked offeror, Urban Atlantic. It passed 7-0. The process now shifts to working out an interim agreement and final agreement with Urban Atlantic.
While few eyes were on the post-midnight action, among them were former City Councilman and current Planning Commissioner Phil Duncan, one of four citizen members of the Virginia Village Proposals Evaluation Committee.
The Urban Atlantic response to the call for proposals received in the past three weeks and summarized on the City’s website, stated that “our proposal delivers nearly 200 units of affordable housing, including a substantial mix of family-sized units within six years with a focus on the City’s two primary goals – maximizing affordable housing production and ensuring economic feasibility.”
Urban Atlantic’s response added, “our financing strategy is designed to minimize funding availability risks, leveraging 4 percent tax credits and available funding sources from Virginia Housing and the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.”
“Most importantly,” it added, “our current underwriting anticipates no additional financial commitments from the City of Falls Church beyond contributing its existing land to a 99-year ground lease and granting a real estate tax abatement to facilitate the project’s development and long-term affordability for many decades to come.”
“Our Team, led by Urban Atlantic Development, in partnership with Gibson Spyre, a Virginia based and Veteran-owned small business led by Thomas Gibson, former board chair of Virginia Housing, has a deep history of successfully developing affordable housing at the national, regional and local level, having developed over 10,000 units of housing, including over 1,500 units of affordable and mixed-income housing completed or under construction over the last five years. We have assembled a diverse team of best-in-class designers, engineers, and consultants that understand the community, have deep expertise working within Falls Church.”
Urban Atlantic wrote, “We understand that the City is focused on the following financial, development, and community objectives: 1) Deliver the greatest number of affordable units possible; 2) Prioritize financial feasibility and speed to market; 3) De-risk the project by utilizing reliable, non-competitive funding sources. 4) Minimize further financial commitment from the City; 5) Provide broad affordability (30-80% AMI units) and family-sized units; 6) Deliver a project that respects and is compatible with its neighbors; 7) Design a sustainable building; and 8) Ensure a robust tenant relocation plan that prioritizes existing residents.
“As community-first developers with a long-standing track record of public-private partnerships, Urban Atlantic and Gibson Spyre have crafted a development strategy that achieves these objectives without requiring the City to commit additional investment dollars beyond the contribution of its land and the granting of a real estate tax exemption. The result is a program that is financially feasible, ready to execute, and backed by a team with the experience to bring the Virginia Village vision to life.”
The 7-0 unanimous vote by the Council was indicative of the tough no-nonsense conversations and debates that occurred behind the scenes, the News-Press has learned. The momentum sought by a former City official who continues to live in the adjacent Winter Hill development did not gain any significant traction in the last few months as the process was moved quickly under a federal funding deadline for support funding which looms early next spring.
