Vic Socotra

29 March 2009

The Madison

(The Visiting Dog)

The Visiting Dog tugged at me, dragging me forward along the fresh white concrete sidewalk next to the fresh blacktop. This had been an alley that ran along the old Buckingham Village garden home, separated by a stern but decorative fence from the high-rise assisted living facility at Culpepper Garden.

The last time I had been able to walk this way was before the demolition had begun. The alley was stained with old motor oil from the little Japanese jalopies that were parked on the oblique to the speed bumps and the dumpsters.

I stopped walking that way because someone had tossed a chicken carcass in the general direction of the green steel refuse container. It had been run over a couple times and thoroughly integrated with the alley debris, so I didn’t see it, but there was no fooling the Old Dog. He was on it in a second, the loosely associated bones draped on either side of his snout and a look of triumph in his brown eyes.

There was hell to pay on that walk, let me tell you, since Old Dog was going to held onto that carcass like grim death, and I was equally determined that he was not going to kill himself on splintered chicken bones without a fight.

We stayed on the Gardens side of the alley thereafter where the chicken bones had to fly up and over the fence.

There was plenty to smell on this walk, though everything was too new to have much in the way of old lunches lying around on the new sod.

We walked past the entrance to the underground garage. I had heard that there were 0.8 parking spaces for each unit in the vast bulk of the new building above, and I had no idea how that was going to work out.

I don’t know how the Visiting Dog felt about things, but I realized the structure was coming to life when I saw lights on in some of the units on our morning treks. I have been dreading this day since the demolition on the old low-rise buildings began more than a year ago, and the great pit began to be excavated right out to the lot lines.

See, we don’t know who the new neighbors are going to be, and from the size of the building, it looked like there are going to be a lot of them.

The residents of the old complex were mostly from Central America; there was a time when it was largely Vietnamese, but by the time this part of the Buckingham dream came to an end, the voices here spoke in Spanish.

The deal with the County had been complex. The Paradigm Construction and Management Company had been subjected to several social commitments to social engineering as a condition for being permitted to develop the block to the north as luxury row houses, “pricing from the mid-$800s.” That was a lie, of course, since the good ones were $1.2 million.

The answer was the big new building, which would feature affordable housing. The demographics of Arlington County are problematic. The median income is around $73,742, with an average of $101,087, which shows you how skewed things are against the people who actually work for a living.

The County leaned on the developer to make provisions for units priced on a sliding scale. No one had any idea when the deal was struck that it was the luxury town homes that were going to slide down, and dramatically.

Men have been hired to stand on the corner at Glebe Road and wave signs shaped like red arrows that now announce prices “from the $600s,” and the model units are still empty, and the long cleared building lots are starting to show green spring grass coming up for the second year.

We turned the corner on an epiphany. The Dog did not seem surprised, but I have been looking at the back end of the building for so long that it was only natural to think that what was facing us was the front, not the rear of the building.

Construction fencing remains, but now the workers who used to live here are working on a green space to replace the green space that was here before, butting up to the next segment of old garden homes that have yet to be torn down. According to the plan, there is to be another of these gigantic buildings that will fill in the rest of the block, and the focus will be on this central courtyard with a tot-lot and drop-off parking that will empty into the whizzing traffic of George Mason Drive.

There could be nothing further from the original dream. When Buckingham first rose, the neighborhood was a sealed entity. Frances Freed was quite adamant about that. The auto was intended to serve Buckingham, not the other way around. The roads had gentle curves to soften the sight-lines, and steep curbs.

The vision was that Moms could walk their children to the K.W. Barrett Elementary School without being subjected to an onslaught of hurtling traffic. But that dream died a long time ago, and the cars fly through the neighborhood on their way to someplace else,

Walking the Visiting Dog along George Mason is a little un-nerving, since the traffic is so fast and so close, and the leash has to be held tight against disaster.

Coming from the back of the building as we were, it was quiet. No one is living there, yet, but that is going to change quickly.

As we passed the corner, sniffing the new ornamental shrubbery, there was a cardboard sign in bright colors.

I discovered that the block now had a name, and Big Pink is now located adjacent to a place called “Ballston Station,” and the building has a name.

“The Madison at Ballston Station.”

The dog marked one of the bushes next to the sign. Having nothing better to do, I read the words:

“Paradigm presents The Madison at Ballston Station...your ideal urban gateway to the life you want in the national Capitol region. Here in Ballston, all the best of the urban life is open to you, from neighborhood cafes and nightspots to great shopping at Ballston Common Mall and neighborhood storefronts. With Ballston Metro just blocks away, your new Madison address is your portal to work, and play, across greater Washington, DC.”

That was a lot to take in, and it is at least a mile away on foot to the nearest station, but it suddenly occurred to me that if this was the gateway to a better life, I was entitled to take a look at it.

The Dog and I walked toward the security guards lounging next to their SUV. The entrance was oddly subdued, and secured by sturdy double-paned glass. I waited for the guards to tell me that the Dog could not enter, but they did not. We walked around them, and the Dog had the good manners not to jump up on them. I opened the door and we entered the sealed chamber that protects the inner sanctum.

I could see a Concierge desk with no one behind it, and a plastic cover to protect the new rugs. I had to look around to see the telephone panel and instructions on how to contact the Rental Office inside.

The Dog sniffed the inner door as I picked up the phone and punched in the code that provides access to the life they tell me I am looking for.

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