A Luxury Home Firewall Could Save This Neighborhood From Amazon’s HQ2
In Crystal City, a developer says plans to build apartments will actually preserve nearby affordable housing.
Henver Palma outside his family’s shop in the Arlandria part of Arlington, Va.
Photographer: Deb Lindsey for Bloomberg Businessweek
Amazon’s development partner in the Crystal City section of Arlington, Va., has a solution to preserve affordable housing: surround the new headquarters with a firewall of luxury apartment towers. That way, the theory goes, the affluent won’t push into less-expensive enclaves nearby.
Two miles away, Sarah Ashton is already feeling the pressure to sell her 12-unit apartment building in the working-class Alexandria neighborhood of Arlandria. The offers keep coming, and Amazon.com Inc. hasn’t even arrived yet. But while she may get a windfall, she worries about her tenants, the Central American-born construction laborers, cleaners, and restaurant workers who populate “Chirilagua,” as locals call the community near Reagan National Airport. “When high-tech firms come, it stimulates inequality,” says Derek Hyra, a professor of public policy at American University in Washington and a former Alexandria city planning commissioner. “The lower-rent areas like Arlandria in close proximity face the biggest threat.”