City Council to weigh five-year extension for West End asphalt plant, testing 2027 closure promise

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Alexandria City Council on Wednesday will decide whether to honor a 2019 promise to West End residents that Virginia Paving Company's asphalt plant would close by Jan. 1, 2027, or grant the company a five-year reprieve over the unanimous objection of its own Planning Commission.

The hearing on Special Use Permit #2026-00018, covering the plant at 5601 and 5603 Courtney Avenue and three adjoining parcels on South Van Dorn Street, is item 22 on Council's final docket. The public hearing meeting begins at 6 p.m., with the regular session starting at 7 p.m. or shortly after, at the Council Chamber at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center, 4850 Mark Center Drive.

The meeting will also stream on the city's website and government Channel 70 and is accessible by Zoom webinar, according to the docket.

A promise made in 2019

Virginia Paving has operated an asphalt plant on the site since 1960, according to the staff report. The current Special Use Permit dates to 2006, when Council added extensive conditions covering noise, odor, air quality, stormwater and landscaping; the Eisenhower West Small Area Plan, which envisions the corridor transitioning to transit-oriented, mixed-use development near the Van Dorn Metro station, followed in 2015. In 2019, Council set a firm closure date of Jan. 1, 2027 — a date staff says was based on "expectations of the immediate redevelopment of the site and surrounding area," according to the staff report.

Virginia Paving, a division of Eurovia Atlantic Coast LLC, is now asking Council to extend that deadline five years, to Jan. 1, 2032. In a narrative description filed with its application, the company's attorney, Kenneth Wire of Wire Gill LLP, wrote that the request reflects "a reasonable and balanced approach" given the company's compliance record and "the slower-than-anticipated pace of redevelopment" in the area. The application is dated April 8, 2026, and was revised May 29 to disclose that nearly the entire property now sits within a federally designated floodplain, according to the application materials.

The Cameron Station Civic Association says the company had ample warning. In a letter to the Planning Commission ahead of its June 22 hearing, the association recalled cautioning Council during the original 2019 hearing that a promise to leave in seven years "is really not that good if you don't have some kind of a verifiable time table so you don't end up with somebody calling at the last minute to say, 'Oh gee, we need another five years.'"

Staff says approve; Planning Commission says deny

City planning staff is recommending approval with revised conditions, according to the staff report. Staff's reasoning rests on three points: the plant's compliance record, with no Special Use Permit violations identified in the past seven years and zero verified odor complaints in 2024 and 2025; the site's location in a floodplain and the broader slowdown in development financing, which staff argues makes near-term redevelopment unlikely whether or not the plant closes on schedule; and a package of improvements the applicant has offered in exchange for the extension, including a new baghouse air-filtration system, new doors on the loading facility to cut dust, and roadway and landscaping upgrades along Courtney Avenue.

The Planning Commission rejected that recommendation. Commissioners voted 6-0 on June 22, with Commissioner Harris absent, to recommend denial. According to the commission's draft action summary, members found "the use is incompatible with the Eisenhower West Small Area Plan" and agreed with residents "regarding negative impacts of continued operation of the use." Several commissioners said they would have supported a one-year extension paired with a city-initiated rezoning of the property, but concluded that negotiating a full set of operating conditions for only one year would be impractical, leaving denial or deferral as the only realistic options, according to the meeting summary.

The case for the plant

Wire told the Planning Commission the plant employs 70 people, 16 of them Alexandria residents, and that the city and the Virginia Department of Transportation remain among its largest customers, according to the commission's summary of his testimony. He said the company is offering roughly $2 million in property improvements to justify the five-year term and that the plant has had "zero SUP violations" in the past seven years.

Staff's recommended conditions would also cut the plant's allowable annual asphalt production nearly in half, from 980,000 tons to 600,000 tons, with additional limits on nighttime and Code Red air-quality days, according to the staff report's list of revised conditions.

The case against

Opposition has come from several civic groups and at least one major adjacent property owner. The Cameron Station Civic Association and the Summer's Grove Homeowners Association both submitted letters asking the Planning Commission — and now Council — to hold the company to the original 2027 date. Richard Greenberg, a principal with Greenhill Capital who owns 23 acres adjacent to the site, told the Planning Commission his company has submitted purchase offers for the property that went unanswered, and that the plant's continued operation is delaying his own approved mixed-use redevelopment plans nearby, according to the commission's meeting summary.

Former Councilmember Del Pepper, who voted for the 2019 extension, also wrote to the Planning Commission. She said she had intended that vote to be final and that continued operation of the plant makes the area "less attractive for developers to make bids on nearby properties," according to the commission's summary of her remarks.

A separate letter submitted to the Planning Commission by resident Greg Hillson raised questions about a 2019 email exchange between then-Commissioner Mindy Lyle and an attorney who represented Virginia Paving at the time, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Hillson wrote that he draws "no conclusion about what was discussed or what, if anything, resulted," but asked Council to confirm whether similar private contact between applicants and decision-makers is occurring in the current proceeding.

Also on Wednesday's agenda

Council will also take up item 7, the second reading and final passage of an ordinance formally rezoning the property at 1019 Cameron Street from CL/Commercial low to CD/Commercial downtown, completing action on Rezoning No. 2026-00001, which Council previously approved on June 13. It's one of several roll-call consent items on the docket alongside a similar rezoning at 4154 Duke Street and an implementing ordinance for the city's Housing 2040 master plan amendment.

Meeting Details