The Connection

Just two weeks after Arlington County announced that it was planning on placing a temporary fire station on the future Wilson School site, the County Board unanimously voted to move forward with an agreement that would allow the fire station to occupy nearly half of the field space at the Wilson site until at least 2020.

According to the staff report, a two-phase construction of Rosslyn properties would add costs that make the project financially untenable. Given that the construction would demolish the existing Fire Station 10 at 1559 Wilson Boulevard before the new station would be built at the adjacent County-owned property, the county would need to construct a temporary fire station in the area. Of the nine sites considered, only the Wilson School site, the Rhodeside Green Park and the Holiday Inn site were publicly owned, within the appropriate General Land Use Plan designation, and within adequate response times to the call coverage area. The Holiday Inn site was deemed inadequately sized with problematic topography, leaving just the Wilson School site and Rhodeside Green Park.

The designation of the Wilson School site as the location for the temporary fire station hasn’t been firmly established. The County Board’s vote allows the Wilson School site to be selected only if no alternative location is found within 60 days. The board directed County Manager Mark Schwartz to begin a two-month study to review Wilson School site’s feasibility as a fire station in comparison to Rhodeside Green Park and the Holiday Inn site. The final decision on the fire station location will be made at the County Board’s September meeting.

Over a dozen speakers, mainly parents of Arlington Public School students, showed up at the County Board meeting to protest the decision. The majority of the criticism centered around the plan’s restriction of the Wilson School’s outdoor space. With the fire station taking up large portions of the school’s outdoor space, the county plan called for students to be bused to nearby parks for recreation and sports activity.

“Students need outdoor space,” said parent Thomas Byron III, “Planned rooftop space and a shortened field space are no substitute for proper athletic fields. I’m gravely disappointed and surprised that this was announced after the end of the school year with no opportunity for public involvement or opportunity for H-B Woodlawn to be involved.”

Thomas Byron III’s son, Thomas Byron IV, is a rising junior at H-B and spoke about the passion for ultimate Frisbee at H-B and how lacking athletic fields would hinder education at the school. A common theme among the parents was that open rooftop space, as proposed in the plan, was an inadequate substitute.

“We are relegating the play space to a one-quarter acre site,” said Danielle Arigoni. “We are already woefully underserved on fields compared to other schools. Rooftops are no substitute.”

Arigoni added that if the construction timelines don’t work out the way the county says they will, the students at H-B will be the ones who be forced to continue sharing space with a fire station.

H-B Woodlawn is scheduled to move into the Wilson School site for the 2019-2020 school year. If the construction of the new fire station is completed on time, the fire station will be removed in 2020, but if the new fire station location faces any delays the temporary fire station could remain at the school site longer. Field construction at the site would not be completed until 2021 at the earliest.

Beyond the criticisms of the choice of the Wilson School site, some speakers expressed frustrations that the discussion hadn’t been opened to the public until the County Board vote. Katie Elmore is the Parks and Recreation Commission's representative on the Public Utilities Review Committee and said that the committee had not been given time to review the proposal.

“This was only made public after our last committee meeting,” said Elmore. “We haven’t had all the information and it’s caused some anxiety … We’re disheartened that the late advertisement of this agreement seems to double down on the failure of [Western Rosslyn Area Planning Study] rather than rectify it.”

Changes to the agreement were being made within the day before the meeting. Schwartz noted that, given the last minute revisions, the County Board was voting on the proposal before the public was able to see the final version of the agreement.

“Given the late hour that the discussions were completed, we were unable to post changes to the website,” said Schwartz.

John Kusturiss, development manager for Penzance, said that after the Western Rosslyn Area Planning Study was approved it became clear that the development was not going to be as lean or straightforward as initially planned. Kusturiss said the developer found it difficult to meet their project goals with a two-phase construction.

As compensation, Penzance will provide 100 permanent parking spaces in its underground garage for the school system, saving Arlington Public Schools the cost of a 93-space parking garage that had been planned for the Wilson School site.

“We all thought we had an agreement and understanding; that understanding changed,” said County Board member Jay Fisette. “It’s absolutely true that the expectation was that the fire station would stay where it was while the other station was built. That changed in their plans.”

County Board member Christian Dorsey said he heard the lack of trust from the community and understood the frustration that such a large decision had seemingly been planned behind closed doors.

“The license agreement and lease necessarily could not be a conversation that took place within the full public process. It’s a real estate transaction,” said Dorsey. “Not until recently did we understand [that the] real community issue is where the fire station goes. We could have and should have done better in recognizing where we needed to engage the community more.”

Dorsey assured frustrated citizens that the selection of the Wilson School site as the location for the fire station was not a done deal.