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Federal Friendly Zones™
Alexandria is pioneering the development of Federal Friendly Zones™ (FFZ’s) to support the long-term economic growth of the city and ensure the community is sustainable for future generations. Alexandria is almost unique within the National Capital Region, with a mixture of historic, residential and business districts, each with its own character and nuances, providing a vibrant community where people live, work and play.
Alexandria is also fortunate to have a number of major transportation avenues into and out of the city to include major interstates, major arterial highways, VRE train, Metro, and numerous bicycle and pedestrian paths.
A key challenge for a future Alexandria is to identify areas where business can flourish without impacting other community objectives for livability and sustainability. Recognizing that the federal government will have continuing needs for commercial lease space close to the agency headquarters, capital district and other key agencies, Alexandria has initiated an analysis of the long-term requirements for facilities, infrastructure, and workforce to support the federal agency missions and the associated contractor support.
A significant challenge is revitalizing existing buildings, and providing the incentives for future new buildings, to be built to meet the new and emerging federal facility requirements. These requirements include:
- Energy efficient, LEED Silver certified buildings
- Security standards with stand-off distances and hardened structures
- Use of Building Information Modeling for design, construction and operation of buildings
- Site location within a certain distance of primary transportation corridors and metro stops to encourage mass transit
Alexandria has many areas, neighborhoods and parcels that can meet these requirements. The concept of the Federal Friendly Zones™ is to identify areas and sites that can support the federal requirements and become part of a larger integrated land use decision. Within each FFZ, there are three types of utilizations:
- Federal campus
- Single Federal Occupied Building
- Single building with federal agency as a tenant (dispersed)
Working with the local neighborhoods and federal agencies, a new approach can be developed to ensure the community grows and prospers to achieve mutually beneficial results (such as transit oriented development, Eco-City, enhanced water and air quality, etc.).
Another key objective of the Federal Friendly Zones™ is to move from a Protection oriented process (using bollards, barriers, street closings, etc) that impact the streetscape and public space, to a Resiliency, Redundancy, and Recovery model that relies on enhanced police, fire, emergency management and community preparedness to respond to events (whether natural or man made).
For additional information about the Alexandria BRAC project, contact the Alexandria BRAC Coordinator at chipley@alexecon.org.
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