Coming soon to Annandale: the Townes at Little River Crossing
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| These houses will be torn down to make way for a new townhouse development. |
The new townhouse development approved for the area around McWhorter Place and Markham Street in Annandale will be called the Townes at Little River Crossing.
The developer, the Christopher Cos., hasn’t yet started selling homes but potential buyers can sign up for the “VIP list.” Sales are expected to start next fall or winter.
The development will have 43 units, ranging from 1,854 to 2,712 square feet. They will have three to five bedrooms and three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half bathrooms.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the development last July. The project calls for a small community park across from McWhorter Place to be operated by the Park Authority.
The Christopher Cos. plans to demolish four small houses on the site. One has already been torn down, and the others are boarded up. The development will surround a small house whose owner declined to sell.
Related story: Board of Supervisors approves Annandale townhouse project
The company’s website says residents of the Townes at Little River Crossing will “enjoy suburban charm with city convenience,” allowing “easy access to the shopping, dining, entertainment, and schools that historic Annandale has to offer,” as well as “a short commute” to D.C.
This community, and new one going up near Heritage are huge for creating equity in the Annandale school pyramid… the despicable redistricting of Annandale High in 2011, by one party I may add, destroyed equity for the remaining families at AHS… the boosters, PTA, volunteers, etc… have been absolutely gutted since… any opportunity to bolster the ranks of parents with the time and means to be a positive force at AHS is a godsend.
But families are not buying these homes. It seems that nice neighborhood after nice neighborhood are being bought by older childless couples and not families. It is a travesty.
Unfortunately, those parents that move into these new complexes will not place their children at AHS as the reputation of AHS has gone down hill extensively since the redistricting. They will either pupil place their children at Woodson or such or they will place them in private school. They are not moving to Annandale for the "qualify" of its schools. If they can afford to pay these prices they can afford private school. My children were effected by the redistricting of AHS in 2011 leaving my children still there and I must say PTA, boosters, sports, music and so many other activities went down hill. The gang activity at AHS has increased significantly as well as the violence surrounding the Annandale communities. Less then 1/2 a mile away sits Wadsworth Court that has shown increased deadly violence. Robberies occurring during day light hours. If I had another student rising to AHS after the 2011 I too would have pupil placed them elsewhere. As the mother of 3 children to graduate from AHS of which I became a Fairfax County Police Officer, I would never move to Annandale until it is severely cleaned up. I live in North Springfield and I had I known how things were going to turn out at AHS 20+years ago, I never would have moved to my home. I would have moved up the street into a different school district. For the record, I grew up in Annandale and have over 60 years of history in Annandale. It's truly a shame what Annandale has become.
I can’t speak to the quality of education at AHS as my kid is in elementary, but I lived DIRECTLY Behind the school for 11 years and experienced none of the crime related issues folks believe have turned our area into a slum. I have fond memories listening to marching band and watching teens sneak into that lot to do a quick donut when snow had just fallen. Great neighborhood, nice folks, Annandale is not a ghetto find a new cause.
I can speak to this too. Both of my daughters went there after 2011, and it was pretty much standard high school stuff. Some drugs, a little gang activity, that is about it.
Contrast that to the high school in Los Angeles that I went to. In my senior year, someone tried to shoot my English teacher. Reached in through the window and tried to blow him away. Nothing like attending class with bullet holes in the chalk board. Arsonists torched the admin building – burned it to the ground. My landscaping teacher was assaulted by a PCP addict, and so on. And you quickly learned to never leave anything in your locker overnight – it will be broken into and stolen.
Out of a student body of over 2,000, my graduating class was about 200.
AHS is like a paradise compared to it.
I went to Falls Church High school 20 years ago (very diverse). We had gangs, shootings, murders, weapons in lockers, etc. Annandale back then was a white school and post by Falls Church standards. I agree that there has been significant redistricting and white flight. The same parents that preach not being racist move to white school districts. The thing is that Annandale, Justice, and Falls Church are still really good schools for the kids looking for a good education.
Just a clarification – 20 years ago Annandale was NOT a "white school" – it was such a diverse school demographically that the President's diversity commission held a meeting at the site. Maybe it was all or mostly White in the 70s, but that was a long time ago. I went to Woodson when it WAS almost all White ('81) and my kids all went to Annandale – the oldest graduating in '01.
As a former teacher at AHS as well as still living in the neighborhood that surrounds AHS, I can confirm first hand that everything in the above comment is true.
You get what you vote for.
Unfortunately, that is true. When will folks wake up. It's only going to get worse.
At least the one house has been torn down. It was being used by squatters who had ferrets and other animals. Police had been to the house several times and finally removed everyone (people and animals) from the residence then boarded it up.
This is an article about new, potentially pricy units going up on a pretty severely neglected corner of downtown Annandale. Glad to see them going in. The article says nothing about the school boundary redistricting from 2011 nor about any impact the units will make on the school system, either in Annandale or elsewhere. I realize that some commenters feel strongly about this decade-old event, or the change that they perceive in Annandale, but if that is your concern, this potentially gentrifying development should be exactly what you want to see. The most humorous part of the responses is that "gangs" and robbery are on the rise – this thread of fear has existed here for at least 30 years (I remember the concern about gangs at AHS in the 1990s and it doesn't seem any worse now than it was then).
These townhomes are not going to result in gentrification. As the builder certainly knows, these homes will appeal to investors who will pack them to the rafters with renters. Take a look at almost any of the townhome developments and you'll see parking areas overflowing with personal and commercial vehicles, to the point that two cars can hardly pass one another on the nearby streets.
The run-down mid-century housing stock, low quality schools, the lack of access to Metro, the car-choked roads, decaying commercial infrastructure, niche retail and restaurants, lack of walkability, rising petty crime, illegal immigrants standing around in public areas all day long — the Mosaic District, this ain't. As for Annandale High School, SOL test results show a near straight-line decline from 2011-2019, to below the Fairfax County average.
The Board of Supervisors has no serious plan to address quality of life issues in the Annandale area. A few sidewalks and bike lanes to nowhere aren't going to cut it.
You should probably sell your home for a fortune and move somewhere more idyllic. Wait how could you sell your home for a fortune if the area is a slum oh wait it’s because you’re completely full of crap!
Agreed with the few sidewalks and bike lanes to nowhere. Not going to cut it.
As with the "packed to the rafters" sentiment, it's a common one on this blog and I think is reflective of Mason District landowners at large. This might seem like an alien concept to you, but not everyone looking for a home is a nuclear family. God forbid you should have to live next to a group home of young adults, non-whites, or anyone else not considered the "ideal neighbor". You need a reality check and just an ounce of tolerance for other members of our community.
And with glorifying the Mosaic District…Mosaic is nothing more than a glorified outlet mall. Why is it something to strive for?
I shared this story/comments with a friend who attended AHS in the 1970s, that friend has this to say:
"The real problems at AHS came when they made TJ the magnet high school, dispersed the former Jefferson non-TJ attenders. Understand there were a disproportionate amount of suicides during that transition. Never quite the same afterwards."
I'd say the overall situation has both issues and charms. Data has shown that Annandale apparently has become more prosperous overall, but I'd agree that it hasn't kept up relative to neighboring communities in Mosaic, Tysons, Vienna, or Alexandria where Amazon has been setting up shop. Still, it's clearly good news overall that a developer saw fit to invest in the area and add nice housing where there had previously been essentially a few run-down buildings and brush.
I'm quite familiar with this company. They don't give a frick about the community wellbeing at all–any consequences (good or bad) of their development don't figure into their plan. They're attracting as many buyers as possible with shiny trinkets of little or no substance–and that's it. I certainly hope the impact will be better that I expect, but really, I won't believe it until I see it.
–kda
I'm struggling to see the major concerns here.
Millennials are starting families now and are often priced out of SFH, so they are often buying town homes for starter homes. Anecdotally, many also prefer townhomes so they can spend more time working or playing with their small children rather than battling nature in the yard. Finally, Annandale is priced competitively for its distance to major employment centers. Without new development Annandale will continue to lose young families to other options in NoVA.
This development is tearing down untaxable urban blight and replacing it with homes that are highly likely to bring at least a few young taxpayer families into the core of Annandale. It will also boost the appeal (and land values) of the surrounding properties, and increase demand for local businesses and restaurants.
Investment in our community is also a positive signal to other companies considering to do business in Annandale as well as families deciding to set up roots here.
The school system should be able to figure out how to add some more kids. If it can't then that's a separate and larger problem than this development. If you live nearby and are concerned about parking, I'd support a permitting system so you aren't overwhelmed by the overflow. Neither of these problems is intractable.
What would fit better here? More McMansion SFH homes on the teardown lots would be unaffordable for 99% of young families. Parks cost money. Rezoning to mixed use would be a bad idea at this location.
I suggest they rename it Annandale Speedway Crossing to better reflect the local community values.