“Make No Little Plans” – Public Policy Take 3
Proposed new Virginia Tech CPES campus
Rendering by Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and our grandsons [and our daughters and their daughters] are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”
Quoted in Daniel H. Burnham, Architect, Planner of Cities. Volume 2, 1921 by Charles Moore
Writers are always scratching their heads over finding a good theme, and along comes this one. There is a great story to tell about how a shuttered power plant that once spewed nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide into the air could become the home of next generation research in power technologies.
Alexandria has been working steadily improving its waterfront for several decades, and a great deal has been accomplished in that time. From Jones Point–dwarfed by the massive Woodrow Wilson Bridge–wending north past new public parks, office buildings, townhouses and condos, it’s hard to tell there was an industrial past to the place, the Torpedo Factory aside–the Torpedo Factory being the ultimate swords into plowshares story–bombs into pottery wheels?
Not so many years ago strolling Union Street, underused warehouses were once a near-continuous barrier to the river. 18th and 19th century Americans viewed their rivers as means to an end rather than an aesthetic asset. Admittedly, earning a living was harder; they had less leisure time and shorter lifetimes to enjoy beauty, no matter what Emerson and his solitarian, Thoreau might have sought.
One wonders what the Native Americans would have thought, sitting riverside living quieter lives before the Europeans crashed the party. To the south of Old Town, Jones Point offered about the only signs of human life before the Colonial era.
“Evidence of more extensive Native American settlement comes from investigations conducted at the Jones Point Site, a low terrace at this same river/creek confluence. Small groups camped there in the Late Archaic and Woodland periods, making stone tools from the cobbles eroding from the riverbed, exploiting the abundance of fish in the river and the resources of nearby marshland, and building Alexandria’s first known houses about 1,000 years ago out of bent saplings covered with bark or mats.”
From OLD TOWN NORTH HISTORIC INTERPRETATION GUIDE March 2017 - Revised Completed by the City of Alexandria Office of Historic Alexandria
Today, this close to DC there are few stretches along the Potomac River without noticeable marks of the urban about them.
So we arrive at the shuttered Alexandria power plant. What’s to come of it? If a decision has been made regarding the site’s fate, it’s a well-kept secret. The City of Alexandria has a clearly stated interest in seeing the property develop as a cornerstone to Old Town North–as a gateway to the City from the north, though the property is in private hands, and riverfront property has economic incentives all its own.
The City’s Old Town North Small Area Plan, adopted in 2018, offers the following:
“The Plan… [recommends achieving] placemaking and economic development by promoting a balanced mix of uses with office… retail, arts and cultural uses, and creation of affordable housing options across all income levels. …the Plan envisions the redevelopment of the former power plant site as a mixed-use/innovation district with pedestrian scale blocks and public open space to enhance access and views to the Potomac River. The Plan builds on the City’s commitment to create sustainable and livable communities by establishing strategies to address the combined sewer system, prioritizing green building, enhancing public open spaces, increasing the tree canopy coverage and creating a built environment that promotes safety and walkability.
“The Plan recommends that redevelopment of the former power plant site include innovation and mixed-uses that could build on the area’s creative economy. Innovation uses such as… an academic and research institution, incubator spaces… could serve as an anchor. In addition, uses such as a museum are envisioned for the site. The Plan recommends… [attracting] potential innovation uses to the site. These… will encourage an expansion of Old Town North’s mixed-use character into the former power plant site and will help encourage emerging entrepreneurial opportunities, jobs, and neighborhood services…
“The Plan presents a generational opportunity to integrate the site of a former power plant back into the fabric of the neighborhood… [The site] will modify its relationship with the environment by restoring waterfront open spaces, reducing impervious surfaces, remediating the soil, treating stormwater runoff, and restoring portions of the Resource Protection Area (RPA). The site will be accessible through public transportation, the pedestrian and bicycle network, and will engage the adjoining uses and buildings, offering Alexandria the ability to showcase forward thinking urban and sustainable planning and development for the 21st century.”
Of the fourteen principals listed in the City’s OTN Small Area Plan, arguably three apply directly to the power plant site:
“6. Provide amenities and strategic zoning amendments to retain and attract commercial uses.
“7. Establish a conceptual framework for the redevelopment of the former power plant site.
“12. Promote sustainability for the former power plant site with a goal of carbon neutrality by 2040.”
The Old Town North Small Area Plan proposes extending a number of existing north-south streets (North Pitt, North Royal and North Fairfax Streets) into the site–on the principle that the existing street scale should be emulated. However, contingencies of the site may keep this from being practical, as discussed in Urban Design Concepts to follow.
The site’s ownership is somewhat complicated. The PEPCO substation’s 5+ acres is owned by PEPCO. The remaining 20-some acres is held by GenOn in a long term lease from PEPCO. However, the City has found success through several contentious negotiations in the City’s waterfront development, and perhaps in this instance could be assisted by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
There’s history in this part of Virginia–the Mount Vernon Bike Trail follows the river south to its named landmark and wends its way–in this case past an artifact from the last industrial age. Virginia made one bold move to insure its future by funding the new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus just north of the power station site. Can the state be persuaded to try for one more? Can private institutions?
Examples of reused industrial structures abound. My favorite is the train station the French renovated into an art museum, Musée d'Orsay.
Musée d'Orsay main train room
Closer to home in DC is the former Pension Building constructed by Civil War vets, now home to the National Building Museum. Coincidentally, I witnessed the Pension Building being renovated into the National Building Museum in the early 80s while working across the street in the Metro building designing Metro stations.
SITE PLAN
Where does one begin? I’d like to start with the middle of the puzzle and work backwards. Why would electrical research engineers want to locate on this particular site? The diagram says a lot in a single slide:
Diagrams courtesy Virginia Tech Center for Electronic Systems
Translation: old substation technology transformed into new, leaving an industrial brick pile to be reinvented as,,, ?
Though the power plant no longer generates power, the substation remains an active, integral link in the region’s power grid, with two high- voltage transmission lines running beneath the Potomac River to DC, and others joined to Dominion Power’s grid on the Virginia side of the river. Within sight of the Capital Building it would serve as a model of an Electronic Energy Router replacing the old “on-off” substation switch technology.
Electronic routing substation - courtesy of Virginia Tech CPES
Can PEPCO’s operating substation be reinvented? Might it be better located, i.e. less impactive on the GW Parkway viewshed? The researchers at Virginia Tech’s Center for Power Electronic Systems believe there is a better way to treat the electrical grid, and beginning locally at this site would serve as a very visible example.
Large industrial buildings such as the power plant can be repurposed provided the new facility’s program is thought out carefully enough. The CPES folks put together a wish list. These program elements could be organized in basic building blocks, to wit:
Academic/Allied Industry Research labs, high-voltage lab, library, lecture/conference space, micro grid and new substation.
Commercial Grocery shop, café/restaurant, gym and swimming pool. Key to making these financially successful (and politically viable) in part would be to open commercial spaces to the public, working with local vendors to lease space.
Residential Research faculty and students, visiting lecturers. Alternatively, might affordable housing play a role? Private funding for housing is possible, though could be tricky on a tight, mixed-use site as this. If the commercial space were integrated as a base for the residential, the potential for a private developer’s involvement increases.
Public Amenities such as the general citizenry might frequent. Museum, theater, plaza, green space.
Support Parking, transit station, central HVAC plant and cogeneration elements shared in common.
Urban Design Concepts:
How might a newly conceived research campus relate to the city at large–as an insular, inwardly focused singularity? As an extension of the existing street grid with its attendant vehicular traffic? Models exist for both: the tradition of Jefferson’s UVA lawn, Virginia Tech’s drill field as opposed to downtown campuses such as George Washington University.
However, several singularities already stand out about this site: the scale and siting of the existing power plant, the site’s roughly triangular shape created by the diagonal railroad right of way bounding the site’s south side, and the Mount Vernon Trail skirting the water’s edge. Of interest also, it’s somewhat lower than the adjacent roads and railroad–on the order of 10 feet or so, even as it sits roughly the same distance above the river.
The City’s site studies seem to point toward the power plant’s demolition. However, the power plant is a landmark, and deserves to be studied for new uses. It would take a program scaled to the size of the power plant to take advantage of its renovation, a program, say, for future power research.
If the existing power plant is to be repurposed (verses demolished) becoming part of the academic program, this, along with the still-active substation removes roughly a third to half of the 25 acres from an extended north-south street grid proposed by the City’s OTN Small Area Plan. The existing residential development due south, the Harbor Terrace Condominiums becomes a second impediment. This housing development already disrupts the street grid, occupying most of the land south of the power station site. The Foreign Car Service property is the sole one with redevelopment potential. Logically then, this automobile repair site would also need to be acquired if Pitt Street were to be extended, leaving North Royal Street as the only realistic extension.
Unless the existing power plant and substation were demolished, extending the street grid into the site has limited practicability.
However, what strikes me about the abandoned railroad right of way is its potential as a new urban street, a greenway emerging from the end of North Fairfax Street at the waterfront running toward the GW Parkway (North Washington Street). Possibly also a light rail line heading north to the Virginia Tech Innovation campus and the Amazon campus. This right of way offers the best new face of a redeveloped power station site.
Not too many years ago a proposed route for Arlington County’s Columbia Pike light rail originated at Potomac Yards (aka in Amazon Land), reaching Route 7 at Bailey’s Crossroads in Fairfax. I recall Bill Euille, then Alexandria’s mayor, talking enthusiastically about Alexandria joining that light rail in the future.
The fact that Arlington blinked in the face of political backlash to the cost now deserves revisiting; the light rail alignment ran close to the Amazon campus. Large immigrant and blue collar communities live close to the western end of the light rail at Bailey’s Crossroads, and those folks could make good use of better public transportation, particularly if they were to attend Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus at the other end of the line.
“Make no little plans” was a favorite exhortation from earlier times when community leaders were still eager to build infrastructure.
Organizing the Site
Program and Site. Site and Program. These are the two main ingredients in a good master plan. Once that’s analyzed, everything else is either in support or a hindrance. What stands out about this site is its importance to Old Town North along with gorgeous views of the Potomac, the Capital and the GW Parkway. You can’t ask for a more symbolic anchor to Alexandria–and an equally strong tie to Arlington County just north. So what follows are principles to guide the site’s redevelopment:
• Create views and pedestrian access from the GW Parkway and Slater’s Lane to the site. Screen the substation with program space announcing the research campus, or transform the existing surface lot into a public garden and introduce LED art veiling the substation.
• Set aside the existing railroad right of way for a pedestrian way/fire lane/ light rail corridor. Alternatively, a public one-way street with parallel parking, a separate light rail lane and pedestrian way could be studied.
• Bury the parking and support beneath the southern part of the site–south of the power plant. Vehicular entrances should be visible, but not dominate the public-facing sides of the development.
• Recreate the site’s portion of the Mount Vernon Bike Trail employing best practices for estuary restoration. Introduce one or more scenic overlooks along the waterfront, the first one placed at the southern tip of the site, terminating North Fairfax Drive.
WAAC Master Plan for the Alexandria Power Plant
So how does the master plan developed by students from Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC) stack up?
Alexandria Power Plant Master Plan courtesy of Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center
The WAAC Master Plan proposes renovating the existing power plant as the site’s anchoring feature, with a new axial campus running from southeast to northwest roughly parallel to the existing railroad right of way, with a series of six-to-eight story buildings flanking a public plaza and focused on a glass-and-steel polygonal element representing the high-voltage lab. The high-voltage lab in turn is joined by bridges to the renovated power station.
What the Master Plan does best is acknowledging the primacy of the original power station by deferring to its industrial size at the same time integrating it as the ‘head’ of the new southern campus. Alvar Aalto was the master at creating this kind of urban space.
WAAC South Campus enlarged
WAAC Master Plan - View from the southern campus toward the renovated power station, the High-Voltage Lab to the left. Is the blue rooster a hokie bird? – possibly?
The southern campus is organized along an axis running from the existing power station to the termination of North Fairfax Street at the south end of the site. The campus buildings are shown in mass, but not further defined. They might suggest commercial/residential building along the south side, and the academic buildings facing the river. Creating a commercial-residential block along the southern face would integrate the development into the surrounding residential area. A fire lane between the two banks of buildings isn’t shown, but could be easily integrated. Might also a single lane street help animate the space?
The WAAC Master Plan proposes the geometric expression of the water quality structures forming a cross axis to the campus plaza. In a series of stair steps down in grade, and treated as a series of rain gardens, the last being a sliced section of wetlands projected into the river with the Mount Vernon Bike trail meandering past.
Perhaps the only major element missing from the Master Plan is the potential for a new street fronting the property’s southern edge mentioned in the Urban Design Concepts above. With one stroke, pedestrian-scaled urban streetscape, coupled with a light rail line would be created, a bold, new face to the overall power station site.
WAAC image View from a campus entrance from North Royal Street. The high-voltage lab is shown at left.
There are two cross axes proposed–the first being the series of water quality basins and the second depicted in the entrance view. What makes both of these important are the view corridors from the adjacent residential neighborhood opening across the site toward the river, in modest gestures suggesting the larger axes L’Enfant created in laying out the District of Columbia.
This turning of the street grids is important in reaction to the site’s geometry, and the site’s most important physical feature, views of the Potomac River. Organizationally, these cross axes, along with the main plaza, would do the same work as a traditional street grid, mainly creating similar scale public streets, albeit pedestrian, yet tying the campus to the rest of the City.
WAAC rendering. View from the river. Rain gardens descending to the river are highlighted.
A Student Design from the Past
In the midst of an office full of architects working on the Washington Metro, Harry Weese insisted that a model needed to be built of Maya Lin’s winning competition entry for the Vietnam Memorial. Harry sat on the jury who voted for her design, and was concerned that her less-than professional sketches (Lin being an undergraduate architecture student at Yale) would put off the wider audience. Thus he directed (and paid for) the model to be built. We had a skilled modeler in the office, and he produced this one over a long weekend, if memory serves.
Go Hokies!
The WAAC Master Plan discusses concepts that deserve to be widely considered–regardless of— because of—the student status of its creators. The renderings done by the WAAC students are handsome, and don’t require more than a broader dissemination to persuade. My figurative hat is off to the students and faculty that saw this work to fruition.
If journalists write the first rough draft on history, can blog discussions such as this be the first takes to a wider publication? That’s the hope behind this series of blogs.