ALEXANDRIA, VA – On Monday, June 9, the Patrick Henry Recreation Center saw a surge of community engagement as the City of Alexandria hosted the Kick-Off Meeting and Community Open House for the Duke Street Land Use Plan, setting the tone for the street’s redesign to be implemented over the next couple years.
The plan is focused on the Duke St. corridor (which stretches from the Masonic Temple to Van Dorn St.), and intends to redesign it according to community wants and needs. The city intends on exploring “topics [such as] land use, environment and climate, equity, mobility and connectivity, pedestrian safety and accessibility, parks and open space, and housing affordability,” according to the project website.
In a survey given during the Open House, participants identified Mobility and Safety as the most important topic in the plan, followed by Affordable Housing. Many people emphasized walkability and bicycle accessibility, especially to grocery stores and other essential needs, as big issues in the corridor, along with a lack of trees and benches on the sidewalks. Others complained about the dangerous traffic along Duke St, describing feeling “landlocked” in to their neighborhoods by the hard-to-cross avenue.
One participant lamented the crazy traffic on Duke eastbound just before Telegraph Road during afternoon rush hour, as hundreds of people—many of them from Maryland—all try to get to I-495 from Alexandria…