Hollin Hills Working to Enhance its Historic Pedigree

If you’ve ever cruised neighborhoods a few miles south of Old Town Alexandria between Richmond Highway and the George Washington Parkway, odds are you’ve ventured into the area’s mid-century time warp. You can’t miss the distinctive shapes and feel of the neighborhood envisioned by architect Charles Goodman.

With the first home built in 1949, the 326-acre Hollin Hills subdivision now includes 483 homes and was listed was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. In an effort to further preserve the aesthetics of the neighborhood, Hollin Hills began the process of becoming an Historic Overlay District (HOD) within Fairfax County almost two years ago.

But what does that mean for current and future homeowners in Hollin Hills? We wanted to find out, so we recently spoke to Laura Arseneau, Heritage Resource Planner for Fairfax County, to get the low down on the status and progress of the Hollin Hills HOD.

“The community was the one that brought this forward and asked us to start this research,” Arseneau said. “The community got together and sent a petition to [Mount Vernon] supervisor [Daniel] Storck and got a large—I think it’s 70 percent—support for looking into and examining whether or not this could be a historic overlay district.”

The biggest thing the HOD designation would impact, Arseneau said, would be exterior appearance of homes within the district and planned alterations to a home. Such alterations, if a building permit is required, would have to come before the county’s architectural review board (ARB).

“If someone came in for a building permit, let’s say, to put on a deck, they would have to go to the architectural review board to make sure that the deck would not negatively affect either the building that they’re putting it on, but also the surrounding buildings,” Arseneau added. “But that would be the biggest changes if the Historic Overlay District is approved.”

The ARB is made up of architects, historians, legal counsel, and a landscape architect—all specialists in the preservation field, she said.

“So what we’re trying to do is say is that what makes it significant is the unique architecture and the orientation of the buildings to each other, as well as how they’re sighted on the property,” she said, adding that existing zoning for the area would remain in place.

Though the historic overlay district would add another layer of approval if residents wanted to change exterior aesthetics of their home, it’s a process with which many Hollin Hills residents might be accustomed.

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Christopher Prawdzik, an Accredited Staging Partner® Real Estate Agent, and his wife Angela Logomasini are licensed Realtors® with Samson Properties in Alexandria. Operating as D.C. Region Real Estate, they serve the Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland real estate market and offer comprehensive real estate services, including 4½% full-service listings.
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