Arlington Approves 553 New Housing Units, Grocery Store At Macy's Site

ARLINGTON, VA — The Arlington County Board on Saturday approved a 16-story glass-walled apartment tower with ground-floor retail on the current site of the Macy’s department store in Ballston.

The new building will feature 553 residential units as well as a grocery store on the ground level, replacing the Macy’s and vacant office space above it. The developers have not identified the grocery store that will move into the new space. A Harris Teeter is already located a few blocks south of Macy's on N. Glebe Road.

The new development also will include construction of two levels of underground parking and one level of above grade parking.

“This project will bring needed new housing and an exciting retail presence to the commercial heart of Ballston, just blocks from the Ballston Metro Station. It demonstrates the adaptability and resilience of our commercial market by re-envisioning an office product as residential,” Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol said in a statement Saturday.

Insight Property Group, which submitted the development proposal for the Ballston site, also owns the Haven site on Columbia Pike. The developer became the first developer to use a county tool that allows for the construction of more high-rent units at the Macy's site in Ballston in exchange for preserving existing committed affordable housing along Columbia Pike.

Through the project, it is preserving 118 units at the Haven Apartments along Columbia Pike, which Insight acquired in January 2017 for $20 million and has since renovated.

Insight will also include 12 committed affordable units within the new building in Ballston. The inclusion of the affordable units advances the objectives of Arlington County’s Affordable Housing Master Plan to increase the amount of affordable housing, particularly close to transit, the county said.

The inclusion of the grocery store will bring what the Arlington County retail plan identifies as an “important amenity” to Ballston Quarter, where a mix of uses will further economic success, according to the county.

The Hecht Co. opened the store that is now Macy's in 1951 in a shopping area that was then known as Parkington. In 1986, Parkington was redeveloped as Ballston Common Mall. In 2006, Hecht’s was rebranded as Macy's after Federated Department Stores Inc., owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's, agreed to acquire May Department Stores Co., operator of Hecht's and Lord & Taylor.

With the project approval, new construction will continue in the Ballston area. In November 2015, the Arlington County Board approved a major redevelopment of the Ballston Quarter Project that included renovations to the shopping mall, the construction of the Origin apartment building, and renovations to the office space above the Macy’s.

In November 2016, the county board approved another amendment to the office space to add additional square foot and expand the office use. This site plan amendment remains unbuilt, and the site plan amendment to construct a residential building supersedes the previous approval, the county said.