Next Steps
The County is preparing an RFP and related contracts that will engage a partner consultant for the upcoming planning process. More information to come in early 2018.
June 15, 2017
Budget Update and Kick-off
The County’s budget for 2017 includes funding for the Lee Highway community planning process. The County is currently working to engage consultant resources to facilitate the effort. Kick-off with the community is anticipated for Fall 2017.
April 6, 2017
Kick-off Timing
The County is preparing to kick-off a community planning process for Lee Highway in 2017; however the targeted timeframe is not yet finalized. It will be assessed once funding is confirmed as part of the remaining County Budget adoption process.
December 22, 2016
Survey Feedback
Preliminary ideas about potential study elements and the study area were presented at two public open houses on November 29, and posted online for community review. Community members were encouraged to provide their feedback in person or online. The online survey was open from November 28 – December 9, 2016. In total, 260 surveys were submitted — 86 on paper at the open houses and 174 digitally through the virtual forum.
- View all survey responses
- View a one-page summary of feedback – coming soon
November 28, 2016
Lee Highway Community Open House & Virtual Forum
The County is preparing to kick-off a community planning process for Lee Highway in 2017. We need your help to guide the scope of work and civic engagement plan for the upcoming planning process.
- Join us for a Community Open House on November 29: Daytime hours | Evening hours
- Can’t attend in person? Review the big ideas online and submit your feedback by December 9
The purpose of the Fall 2016 Community Open House and Virtual Forum is to share preliminary ideas and collect public input on the scope of the study. A team of County and APS staff are developing ideas about the study area, planning elements, objectives, outcomes, milestones, and expectations for the study. They are considering what problems need to be addressed, how best to manage the large geography and number of stakeholders, the role of the community-led 2016 Lee Highway Visioning Study, whether consultants are needed, and strategies to engage the community. The final scope and process will be presented to the County Board for consideration in 2017.
May 12, 2016
View the Final Lee Highway Visioning Study Document
The final Lee Highway Visioning Study was published on May 11, 2016.
The Lee Highway Alliance will present the community’s vision and document to the County Board at their Recessed Meeting on May 17, 2016. View the County Board meeting agenda, minutes and audio/visual recordings on the County Board’s webpage.
February 6, 2016
Draft Community Vision Available for Review
Updated April 1, 2016: The comment period is now closed. The design team is compiling and reviewing all comments received. Revisions and next steps will be posted in the coming weeks.
Updated February 17, 2016: The deadline for comments has been extended through Thursday, March 31.
The Draft Lee Highway Community Vision is available for download, review and comment. It was presented to the community at a meeting on February 6 and will be open for feedback through Thursday, March 31. View the community meeting presentation.
Feedback collected will be used to inform final revisions to the document. The LHA will present the report to the County Board. Details on this date will be coming soon. The County Board will use it to inform their decisions about next steps and future planning studies.
November 25, 2015
Around Arlington: Lee Highway Visioning Feature
Arlington TV provides a bi-weekly roundup of the news and notes happening in our community in a program titled Around Arlington. View this November episode, where the Lee Highway Community Visioning Charrette was featured:
November 10, 2015
Highlights from Community Visioning Charrette: Days 3 & 4
Sketches, three-dimensional computer models, word clouds, lists of key ingredients – all of these items and more decorated the walls and tables throughout Langston-Brown Community Center on Sunday and Monday. The design team set up a temporary studio which was open for the public to drop by and see works in progress.
The team set out to complete focused, intensive work sessions to explore the community’s ideas that were collected during the first two days of the charrette. In the open studio, teams gathered around tables, organized by focus area, to test and draw scenarios. Experts in areas such as transportation, economic development and open space, were on hand to help contribute ideas.
On Sunday afternoon, the team put their pencils down and welcomed a crowd of more than 75 residents who came for a studio walk-through. Residents who took advantage of the offer to drop by were greeted with walls and tables covered in maps, trace paper and markers. The team welcomed questions and conversations about the work.
To close the four-day event, materials were collected and presented to the community in an Open House format on Monday evening. Every 30 minutes, a short design briefing was presented to give a summary of the weekend and the big ideas. The team emphasized that all drawings were in “draft” form and used only as tools to test ideas.
A word cloud summarized one-word feedback residents submitted to describe what Lee Highway is like today (top) and what Lee Highway could be like in the future (bottom). Larger words were repeated more frequently.
A draft list of “key ingredients” needed to achieve the draft guiding principles were included in some of the ideas tested.
The next steps for the design team are to compile the information collected at the charrette and create a visioning document that will include vision statements, guiding principles, supporting images and documentation of all feedback received at the charrette. The draft visioning document will be presented to the community in the coming months. Details on this event are coming soon.
November 7, 2015
Highlights from Community Visioning Charrette: Day 2
“Draw your ideas! Big or small, draw them all.” That was the first step on Saturday morning when attendees returned to Langston-Brown Community Center to start the hands-on design portion of the four-day charrette. More than twenty tables around the multi-purpose room were filled with participants.
Small group exercises asked the attendees to consider not just the space between the basic curbs, but also the surrounding and adjacent neighborhoods along the Lee Highway corridor. The groups discussed transportation, development density and where they think key activity nodes should exist.
To tackle street design ideas, attendees considered how to make streets shaped, comfortable, connected, safe and memorable. A “Build the Street Your Way” exercise used a moveable kit-of-parts to build different combinations for different scenarios.
The design session closed with each group presenting their big ideas. Common themes regarding improved streetscapes, more trees and bike-friendly lanes were frequently mentioned. Several groups acknowledged that it was difficult for their table to come to consensus on topics like building heights and traffic lanes.
- “The village square idea appealed to us, too.”
- “We want to encourage people to stop and shop.”
- “This intersection is dangerous! No one can walk here.”
- “We had a hard time fitting everything we wanted, there wasn’t enough space.”
- “We want to protect our existing, local businesses. We use them frequently and love them.”
A spokesperson from the kids table shared their drawings and reported that they would like to see more playgrounds with bigger slides. Another creative idea they requested: dog-walking lanes.
A temporary, working design studio has been set up and will remain open over the next two days at the community center. Anyone is welcome to drop by to see work-in-progress. A guided walk-through of the studio will be hosted on Sunday from 3 – 5 p.m. A more formal presentation and charrette wrap-up event will take place on Monday from 7 – 9 p.m. View the event flyer for more information.
Live updates will continue on Twitter and Facebook, be sure to follow @planArlingtonVA and share your posts with #visioningleehwy.
Can’t attend in person this weekend? A virtual public forum will launch at the charrette wrap-up on Monday, November 9 and remain open until Sunday, November 15. Check back for a link to share your ideas.
November 6, 2015
Highlights from Community Visioning Charrette: Day 1
Residents, business and property owners, commissioners, County Board members, staff and industry experts gathered on Friday night to kick-off the four-day Lee Highway Community Visioning Charrette.
Described as similar to a “barn-raising”, where neighbors come together to help each other accomplish a huge task, the charrette was designed be a collective effort that results in a united, compelling vision.
“It’s worth imagining how far we can take these ideas,” said Victor Dover, principal-in-charge at Dover, Kohl & Partners and an industry leader on livable communities, sustainable development and street design.
The group discussed the importance of Lee Highway, elements to consider and goals for the weekend. One of the goals is to review a set of 9 guiding principles, developed by the Lee Highway Alliance through their previous community meetings, and determine if these are principles the community would like to carry forward:
- Establish a welcoming, vibrant and attractive corridor of neighborhood places
- Provide a complete street safe for everyone – walking, riding, biking, driving
- Enhance character through open space and community gathering places
- Develop a low- to medium-mixed use character
- Encourage economic vitality and sustainability
- Encourage a range of housing choices and staying in place
- Promote environmental sustainability and conservation
- Encourage and support historic preservation
- Maintain and promote the corridor
Interactive polling collected input from attendees in real-time. View the opening presentation and polling results.
Stations around the room collected input from attendees through visualization, post-it and mapping exercises.
Interviews with attendees and key stakeholders revealed direct feedback on what issues are of most importance.
Remaining sessions throughout the weekend will include hands-on design, an open studio and wrap-up on Monday night. View the event flyer for more information.
November 5, 2015
Suburban North Arlington is going to develop. Let’s make sure it works.
Lee Highway is the main street through north Arlington. While other Arlington streets like Wilson Boulevard and Columbia Pike have grown more urban, Lee Highway has remained car-oriented. But the landscape is starting to change, and there’s a big effort underway to ensure residents play a role in shaping the details.
Arlington is famous in smart growth circles for its walkable Metro station neighborhoods, and the sleek urban development there. But there’s more to Arlington than Ballston and Crystal City.
North of I-66, where Metrorail has never reached, Lee Highway is Arlington’s main road. It runs through leafy suburban neighborhoods filled with single family homes and low-rise garden apartment buildings. Its abundant surface parking lots, clutter of roadside signs, narrow sidewalks, and speeding traffic combine to make Lee Highway a fairly typical car-oriented suburban road.
Lee Highway is changing. The community is shaping how.
Read this complete article on Greater Greater Washington.
October 28, 2015
Public Invited to Lee Highway Visioning Workshop
Anyone with an interest in Lee Highway is invited to join in a lively, hands-on workshop – known in planning-speak as a “charrette” – to envision the future of this corridor.
An intensive four-day workshop, sponsored by Arlington County Government, is scheduled to open Friday, Nov. 6 at the Langston-Brown Community & Senior Center, 2121 N. Culpeper St., in Arlington. The goal is to involve the broad community in a visioning effort for the corridor’s future.
Among the topics of discussion: how to safely accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and automobiles; commuter issues; housing opportunities; how much and what type of development is appropriate; transition areas between commercial properties and nearby single-family neighborhoods; streetscape design, and the preservation of cultural resources.
Read the complete news release in the County newsroom.