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Months after the federal government said it intended to bypass D.C.'s local zoning process for a large-scale redevelopment of the Armed Forces Retirement Home — thereby avoiding a potentially lengthy appeal to its plans — D.C.'s top planning official is saying not so fast.
Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Brian Kenner sent a letter to AFRH CEO Steve Rippe stating that "the only legal approach" to the planned 80-acre redevelopment "is in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan," the Washington Business Journal reports.
The AFRH responded this week, according to the WBJ, reasserting its intention to redevelop a piece of the 272-acre campus through federal action, but said it plans to simulate many of the processes a property on D.C. land would go through. The redevelopment has caught the eye of many of D.C.'s top developers, but Kenner warned they had expressed concerns to him about the uncertainty of going through a federal process, rather than the established local one.
Many developers that have filed for planned-unit development applications have faced appeals that have tied their projects up in court, and in two instances, had approvals vacated entirely. The AFRH is hoping to avoid that fate by circumventing the zoning process, but there are still legal avenues to challenge the project if it becomes a federal action.
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