Comments at Arlington County Board Meeting, September 19, 2026.
Neighbors for Neighborhoods (NfN), which is leading the charge against Missing Middle upzoning in Arlington County, reported on July 29 that defendants in a Missing Middle lawsuit on appeal to the state supreme court failed to submit a brief arguing their case by the legal deadline.
The defendants, Arlington County and Wilson Ventures, were appealing the decision of an Arlington circuit court judge to deny Wilson Ventures the right to intervene in the case after he had already ruled on the matter. A state appellate court overruled the circuit judge, and the state supreme court agreed to hear the case on appeal by the original homeowner plaintiffs.
From this remarkable turn of events, NfN speculated that Wilson Ventures only “sought to have EHO reinstated so it could finish its own multi-unit projects that were in limbo. . . This diversionary tactic worked — Wilsons Ventures appears to have achieved its goals.” This may explain why Wilson Ventures abandoned its appeal, but not why the County, which is surely not satisfied with the few multiplexes constructed so far, also dropped out.
I think the County knows it can get the densification it seeks by other means, namely a rewrite of the County’s Comprehensive Plan, including its General Land Use Plan or GLUP. To do this, the County can undertake the same process used to adopt the EHO ordinance in 2023, Va. Code, Title 15.2, Article 3. Invoking statutory language requiring a Comprehensive Plan update every five years, Va. Code § 15.2-2230, I suspect the County will scrap the 2023 EHO ordinance and rezone SFH neighboroods adjacent to Metro corridors for mixed use or transitional development.