02 December 2007

Clear Cut


Former Trees at Buckingham I

I want to thank my long-suffering readers. It is time to diverge from the Novel In November Project, and back to business. The Big Pink book has some possibilities, though I will treat that as a separate matter from here out.

Generating 50,000 words on the same general topic is serious business, and it was an educational experience. Still I ran out of gas altogether yesterday and crashed into a two-hour delirium after the Navy victory over Army, the sixth in a row.

That is a signal event, and I had intended to watch it over some free hot-dogs at the Club, but it was not going to be in the cards. I poked at the manuscript for a while, wondering if that is that what you call a digital compendium, and wound up feeling sorry for the Black Knights of the Hudson.

Six straight years of losing the Big Game! More than half a decade, clear-cut in one direction. Since Michigan is on the same trajectory against the hated Buckeyes, I know how they are feeling. The rivalry is more than a century in the making, though, and there are tides in all the affairs of mankind.
 
The book is supposed to be about the tide that sweeps over us all, viewed through the lens of the minor historical marvel here in Arlington that is the consumer culture writ in brick and concrete.

Some hours of research at the central library revealed what happened some 27 years ago to Buckingham, a go-go market and a quick flip of undesirable properties on highly desirable land.

The intent was to get in and get out quickly, a clear-cut operation. The Kinghoffer Group did it pretty well, displaying the face capitalism, red in tooth and claw. They managed to flip Big Pink and the Hyde Park over into private ownership, essentially removing any responsibility for the physical infrastructure, and sold a couple blocks of the garden apartments before the market went into a tail-spin.

Interest rates were 12.8%- can you imagine it? Kinghoffer got out while the getting was good, and the eventual owners of the properties let them slide. The Vietnamese got out, too, and the rest of the huge campus hit the skids.

I have bored you enough with that, but it has been interesting to see how Little Salvador and Guatemarlington came to be tucked in the middle of a resurgent area ripe for gentrification.

That is the ticklish bit of the matter that has been simmering for years. There is no question that the actual owner of the land has the right to develop it; we have not slid so far from the Founders that the State is confiscating the property. Rather, there were endless negotiations on how much redevelopment would occur, and on what parts of the land.

In exchange for keeping some 300-odd "affordable" rental units (subsidized by the taxpayers) Paragon Properties has been permitted the opportunity to erect high-density town homes "from the mid-$700's" on one third of the three Buckingham Village parcels.

There will be perhaps 180 of these, should the market permit, and two large rental blockhouses will go up just across the parking lot from Big Pink.

The Salvadorans are out of the equation; those that have papers will be permitted to have priority on the list for leases in the new places, but of course that is nowhere near the majority of the residents of the current gentile slum.

The County says the affordable units are intended for our firemen and police and nurses, so they can stay and live here in the community. Of course that is disingenuous.

What is actually happening is that the County is relocating the hard-core poor who are being displaced from other areas by gentrification elsewhere, mostly in South Arlington.

I am curious about the interaction that will occur with the "mid-$700's" who will live at the back of the property line to the projects, since what is changing is the sheer density of the population.

Of course, we have not dealt with the realities of the market. Some the steam has come out of the developing in Ballston, and I do not know if the new town houses will actually be built in this market.

The Hyde Park, for example, is only half the structure that was intended to be constructed, and was never completed. If you walk around the back of the Harris Teeter market you can see where the concrete of the garage was intended to marry up with an identical mirror-image structure.

It could be that the vacant lots will stay that way until the economy turns around again. The projects will come, though, since the busy workers have and the part of Buckingham that has been designated as "historic," which is a code word for preventing the property owner from knocking them down, which is what this is really all about, from the County perspective.

I was walking in the darkness this week, an unavoidable feature of the season and gainful employment when I passed an old woman who is presumably a resident of the subsidized assisted living facility at Culpepper Gardens, which looms just outside my windows. I stepped off the concrete to let her pass unmolested, and as she did, she said: "Aren't you the brave soul."

I blinked in the darkness, realizing that the frail woman has felt the change in the streets around Big Pink.

The new rich are not here yet, and the property where the buildings will be constructed are still bare and fenced. They will be strident in their demand for security around their investments. The historic conversions of the old garden apartments up the road, beyond the current section being razed, are only now filling up with Arlington's underclass. But already an ominous difference is felt by those least able to deal with it.

The rumble of the dump-trucks hauling away the remains of the old slum start at 0700, and the noise will go on for years. They are going to delve three stories deep in the earth to create garages, and the pile-drivers will be the next act in this story.

Arlington is known as the city of trees. As the old low buildings emptied out and the chain link fences went up, the stately trees had numbers spray-painted on their trunks.

I assumed, optimistically, that the trees were to be spared, and incorporated into the grounds of the big new buildings. Yesterday, I saw they had all been sawed down and piled up for the dump-trucks. The property is clear-cut, and the numbers must have been only to ensure that they got them all.

The County will now determine who our neighbors will be. I am following the situation with a fair amount of interest, since the market means I cannot sell, and unlike the other residents of the Buckinghams, will be here for the foreseeable future.

Big Pink is a nice campus. We shall see if we have to erect our own fences around the perimeter.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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