Open Air Market at Arlington Mill

After three years of trying to get a Columbia Pike farmers market off the ground, a new use permit is coming up before the County Board at its upcoming Nov. 18 meeting.

The proposal put forward by the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization would reestablish an open-air farmers market in the outdoor plaza of the Arlington Mills Community Center. The market would operate from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.

A use permit for a farmers market at Arlington Mills was originally filed and approved in 2014, but according to the staff report after several weeks of operation it wasn’t attracting enough customers to stay operational. Vendors began expressing concerns about the low number of sales, and after three months of operation it was closed.

If approved, the new farmers market will open in Spring 2018 and will remain open until October.

Residential Off-Street Parking Guidelines

Space is tight in Arlington, parking space doubly so, but new parking standards could make those spaces even scarcer. At the Nov. 18 County Board meeting, the board will review new parking guidelines for off-street multi-family residential projects. The guidelines will focus special parking exemptions along the Metro corridors, where new developments in recent years have frequently attained parking reductions because of their access to mass transit options. The new guidelines would impact new developments along the Rosslyn-Ballston and Jefferson Davis corridors. Similar guideline changes were made earlier this year in Alexandria, where parking requirements were reduced in areas with greater mass transit accessibility.