Editor: The following is an open letter to the Arlington development community:
In responding to the Arlington County Board gift to you that is known as Missing Middle, please be sure to build first on all sides of board members’ homes.
Please be sure to build eightplexes on all sides and make them as high as you possibly can, so board members never have sun or privacy in their yards again. Make sure you do not have any off-street parking, so that they will never again be able to leave their homes without having to consider how long they will have to circle their neighborhoods to find an open spot.
Also, be sure they can never entertain friends and family again, as guests will be turned off by not being able to park anywhere near their house.
Be sure you do a poor job of managing wastewater from the lots you develop, so they will now have basement floods they never had before. Promise to cut down all the trees on each of the lots you develop, so there will be no shade for anyone and temperatures will meet much higher urban norms from now on.
Be sure to make each one a three-bedroom place so that at least 48 additional children will be living on the four sides of their home, requiring several new classrooms in all neighborhood schools. Also, make sure your bids are all cash for all lots in their neighborhood so that no new families can purchase single-family homes there, since they will not be able compete with developers.
Finally, be sure that no one ever has a desire to buy a home in Arlington again, since they will never know if developers will be tearing down all the neighboring homes, overcrowding their schools, ruining the tree cover, making parking impossible and destroying their ability to live in a peaceful neighborhood.
Do not worry about the older neighbors who have put all of their resources into their homes in hopes of living there in retirement, or care about the new families that saved for years to achieve the American dream of living in a single-family neighborhood.
After all, the County Board members couldn’t care less about Arlington families. So why should you?
Thanks for your help in ruining Arlington.
Merryl Burpoe, Arlington