In the news: 

• BZA Update! On January 31, 2024, the Board of Zoning Appeals Hearing finally occurred - a full 19 (!) months after the appeal was first sought (see video and agenda items).  Given the large and duplicate sets of documents in the County-managed agenda link, see this subset of the most relevant and recent files from the Quincy Site appellants: Presentation, Findings of Facts & Conclusions, Supplement-Exhibits A-G, Exhibit H, Errata-Supplement, Motion to Disqualify.  See also the Resources Page with BVSCA and Covenant Info.  Also note the BZA Resolution of September 12, 2023 - and ask yourself why the BZA members who did the right thing needed to pass this resolution.  After reviewing some of this, do you sense frustration among neighbors?  Would you want this to happen to you or others in Arlington?  More can be said about this hearing and what it took to be heard given the County's tactics- so check back!  We have a dedicated BZA Hearing Page.
  
  

• Neighborhood may see ART-bus storage over long haul (Gazette Leader)

• County drops lawsuit against civic association, residents over attempt to block bus parking (ARLNow). 

• But, learn more about the County's legal and other tactics. And consider why the BZA passed this resolution of September 12, 2023, 

• See our summary below on the Board Review of the January 20, 2024 County Board “Review” Meeting of the Use Permit Granted by the County Board on May 14, 2022 - for the Operation, Idling, and Parking of up to 29 Arlington Transit (ART) Buses Out of the Quincy Site. 

• Finally, if you like bus idling (and more!) in residential neighborhoods, check out the videos at the Quincy Site - YouTube page.

About the Quincy Site. The 6.11 acre Quincy Site is owned by Arlington County Board and is within a low residential neighborhood.  It is adjacent to residential properties and Hayes Park.  Washington-Liberty High School is on the opposite side of the street (N. Quincy Street) from the entrance to the Quincy Site.  Arlington Science Focus School, an elementary school, is one block away, on the other side of Hayes Park.  

In November 2017, the County Board purchased the Quincy Site.  Over the course of the prior roughly 38 years, the previous privately-held owners of the property rented out portion of the Quincy Site for office space use, the operation of a bowling alley in the first of the buildings on the site (when entering from N. Quincy Street), temporary postal operations, a children's exercise and play facility, a CrossFit gym.  All such uses were in harmony with the surrounding low residential neighborhood.  Further, all such uses were in full compliance with a 1985 restrictive covenant covering the roughly 28% of the property closest in proximity to the single-family residences bordering the Quincy Site on the south side. The covenant was agreed to by then-owner of the Quincy Site when this portion of the property was re-zoned from “R-5” (single residential) to “C-O-1.0” (Mixed Use), “for the purpose of producing a pleasing development” of the property that would be “compatible with the surrounding area.”  The covenant is expressly stated to run with the land, such that it survives any change in ownership of the Quincy Site.  But as a result of the County Board’s lack of planning, the County uses of the Quincy Site have demonstrated a complete disregard for the health, safety, and welfare of the surrounding neighborhood.  This website provides visual evidence of the County’s offensive “swing space” uses of the Quincy Site over the last six+ years.  Check out our videos of the County operations: Quincy Site - YouTube

We will be updating this website from time to time as we fight – both in court and through the media - the County Board’s numerous violations of law and breach of the covenant.  Please check back periodically to get updates on that fight.  Also, feel free to contact us by email to northquincysite@gmail.com to be notified of updates on quincysite.org.*

Highlights of the January 20, 2024 County Board “Review” Meeting of the Use Permit Granted by the County Board on May 14, 2022 - for the Operation, Idling, and Parking of up to 29 Arlington Transit (ART) Buses Out of the Quincy Site 

• A neighbor explains the County's legal and other tactics. 

• The County Attorney, Minh Chau Corr, turns truth on its head by asserting that the Ballston-Virginia Square Civic Association and a few of the BVSCA’s members (whose properties are within less than 100 feet of where the ART buses are operating and situated) initiated litigation against the County Board.  The reality: the County Board directed a County staffer to cancel four appeals that the BVSCA and these BVSCA members submitted to the Arlington County Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) in the days prior to May 14, 2022, when the County Board approved the grant of a special exception use permit for the operating, idling and parking of the ART buses on the Quincy Site.  On May 25, 2022, the County Board filed a lawsuit naming the BVSCA and these members as defendants, asserting that the defendants did not have legal standing to exercise their state law-provided statutory right to appeal the actions of the County Board, taken on May 14, 2022.  Then the County legal staff – in what the County lawyer ludicrously described as a defensive movement and procedural tactic – waited until late June 2022 to arrange for process to be served on the BVSCA and its members, after the 30-day period provided by state law in which the BVSCA and its members were required to take legal action or otherwise forfeit their statutory rights.  All for the sake of perpetuating the myth, first articulated by then Vice Chair Christian Dorsey, that the BVSCA and its members initiated legal action against the County Board.  

• The County Attorney also mentions that the BVSCA and its members, who submitted appeals to the BZA in May 2022, will finally have their day in what is a quasi-judicial forum (i.e., a public hearing before the BZA).  However, the County Attorney fails to disclose that the primary reason for the 20-month delay is primarily the result of the County Board and County staff cancelling the appeals promptly after they were submitted (a knowing and willful violation of state law), for purposes of avoiding an automatic stay of any and all actions with respect to the Quincy Site pending the BZA’s conduct of a public hearing.  To learn more about the sequence of events that resulted in 20-month delay in the holding of the BZA public hearing, see the applicants' supplement to the BZA.  In addition, this BZA resolution of September 12, 2023, should prove informative to readers.

• Ballston-Virginia Square Civic Association President provides a five-minute summary of BVSCA's overall concerns at the County Board review.  Other speakers shared pictures of activities and violations.

• Senior staff explain why extensive and routine bus idling is necessary and occurring on the Quincy Site, although the explanation misrepresents the applicable state anti-idling regulation, which the County is violating.  Nonetheless, the County Board unanimously vote to renew the use permit - and through this unanimous vote and general statements, endorse the excessive idling. 

• The County Manager suggests that there will be delays in the completion of the ART Operations and Maintenance Facility (AOMF) and transitioning of the buses off of the Quincy Site, despite prior assurances that: "We will definitely be out of there [the Quincy Site] by the end of 2025." BVSCA members have long suspected (and expected) that the County will use the clause in the use permit for the County Board, in its discretion, to extend the use permit.

• The County Manager hints that future bus uses at the site could be part of a possible long-term plan as the new AOMF will not accommodate future needs.