A sign advertises open retail space on Clarendon Boulevard. (Photo: TBD Staff)

For many real estate developers, the case for loosening Arlington’s rules governing retail on the ground floor of buildings comes down to one question: what’s better, office space or empty space?

Nearly 10 years ago, combating lackluster street life in neighborhoods like Rosslyn, Arlington County implemented regulations requiring new buildings to incorporate space for street-level retail establishments. Now, business owners plan to ask the county for a little leeway on the policy, as the Washington Business Journal noted today. The Retail Task Force and the Arlington County Board will meet Aug. 26 to discus the plan.

It’s now become clear “what locations work and which don’t work," Dittmar Properties’ Vice President Robert Bushkoff, a task force member, says. "We’re hoping the board will have an open mind about the dynamic nature of retail businesses and what makes them successful." One recommendation from the task force report (PDF), which was delivered to the board late last year, is to examine allowing certain office spaces and other uses to be located in areas currently set aside for first floor retail, as appropriate.

Bushkoff has seen a prime example of where retail doesn’t work at his company’s Quincy Plaza building, at 3900 Fairfax Drive. Of 10,000 square feet set aside for retail on the ground floor, 4,000 of that has gone unoccupied since the building opened four years ago. Another tenant, a coffee shop turned sandwich shop, recently went out of business. "There’s just not the amount of foot traffic that’s needed to support these businesses," Bushkoff said.

In other cases, owners end up leasing to destination tenants that may not be ideal for the location, Bushkoff points out. Dittmar recently leased to Mattress Warehouse on the ground floor of its building at Wilson Boulevard and North Oakland Street in Ballston. "It’s good for us, but are they doing well there, I don’t think so," Bushkoff says. "Is that what the county wants there, I don’t know, but that’s what ends up being there."

The report recommends the county consider allowing certain service providers, day care centers, or university classrooms on the first floors of some buildings. By way of example, Michael Foster, of MTFA Architecture, Inc., pointed to offices that could have engaging window displays and benefit from foot traffic as other uses for less successful retail areas.

“A small architectural firm, or graphic design agency, or media technology people, these businesses often have very interesting and exciting windows,” he says. “They don’t belong in a storefront right at Metro, but in between stations, it might be nice if we had some of our local professional services that really can benefit from walk-in traffic and really want to have an expression on the street.”

Currently, if a building owner wants to bring in a tenant that is not considered retail on the first floor of a building, the county board must approve the change. The Shooshan Company just went through that process in order to lease 2,000 square feet of space in its Liberty Center, which had been empty for almost three years, to the Arlington Community Foundation, a local nonprofit. The county approved the amendment granting a temporary change from retail to nonprofit office for the next five years.

Developers complain that the site plan amendment process to change from retail to another use is an arduous one. (The definition of arduous in this case, for the record, is two months and $4,500 to get the change for the ACF space, according to Kevin Shooshan.) Owners would benefit from a “more fluid” process for converting the space, Shooshan says.

The task force is also hoping the county will take up other issues that would support retailers, including providing more flexibility for individual businesses’ signs and space configurations that are often designed before tenants have even committed to the spaces.

Tenants are often baffled by the fact that they cannot make changes to the signs that were previously approved for a space they lease without the landlord amending the site plan, Shooshan says. Sandwich signs, balloons, or other means of drawing people into a store from the street are not allowed, as a few Fillmore Street businesses learned the hard way last week.

“The process seems a little backwards to me," Shooshan says. There’s often no way of knowing how signs should be configured so early in the site planning process, he says. "To me, to be a little flexible on the locations and cover things like square footage and the sizes and things later makes sense."

Sue Pyatt, who owns Kinder Haus Toys and also served on the task force, says a little more flexibility on things like the sign issue could help to make struggling businesses more successful. "There are certain rigid requirements that retail has to adhere to, in terms of what they can put up as signs," she says. "It would be good if they allowed for a little more flexibility, a little more creativity."

As to whether the giant Lego man outside her store, currently dressed as a wizard, technically violates some of those rigid requirements, Pyatt says she doesn’t know. "I always figure that as far as the signs and activating the street, I’ll do what i feel is good for the store, and hope I’m not breaking any important rules," she says.