ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City Council voted unanimously Saturday to approve the first phase of HRP Group’s redevelopment of the former Potomac River Generating Station, clearing the Development Special Use Permits for the project’s opening blocks and a $135 million tax increment financing package the developer says will underwrite the public infrastructure needed to bring the long-fenced waterfront site back into use.
The vote caps a roughly six-week approval process that began with City Manager James Parajon’s late-April presentation of the financing framework and ran through a unanimous June 2 recommendation from the Planning Commission. According to HRP, groundbreaking is anticipated in 2027.
The approved permits cover Block B, Block C, a Waterfront Park and a Rail Corridor Park — the first two blocks of vertical construction plus two publicly accessible open spaces. HRP has described the blocks as a mix of rental and condominium buildings with ground-floor retail. The permits establish the framework for converting the roughly 19-acre site into what the developer characterizes as a mixed-use neighborhood with residential buildings, retail, affordable housing, public open space, improvements to the Mount Vernon Trail, and new pedestrian and bicycle connections.
The financing
The TIF package provides $135 million in bonds, split across two phases and backed by future tax revenue the project is projected to generate, to cover public infrastructure and associated costs — including deconstruction of the power plant, environmental remediation, new public roads, and open space. A tax increment financing arrangement captures a portion of the new tax revenue a project produces — revenue the city says would not exist without the development — to repay a bond issuance, rather than drawing on existing city revenue…