Comments At Arlington County Board Meeting, February 25, 2025.
In a February 12, 2025 email to the Arlington County Civic Federation Revenues and Expenditures Committee, Suzanne Sundburg estimated that to date the County has spent at least $440.75 million to redevelop the Barcroft Apartments on Columbia Pike.
This does not include $40.7 million for reduction of the loan balance to avoid higher interest rates on debt service, but it does mean that those funds were not available for other purposes at the time they were spent. It also does not include the annual debt service on Barcroft Apartments loans estimated at $12 million.
As Sundburg pointed out in her eblast, “[In 2021] Jair Lynch paid roughly 3 times the property’s then-assessed value of $138 million (vs. $425 million purchase price).”
By now Sundburg’s low ball estimate of the County’s investment in Barcroft Apartments is $441m/$138m or 3.2 times its assessed value at the time of sale, not counting the debt service payments.
This payout has reaped vast rewards for the slumlord who sold the property to Jair Lynch in 2021 after milking it for the better part of a century. It has also benefited the new owner Jair Lynch, who has evidently forked out little if any of its own money on the investment. So where does that leave County taxpayers who underwrote the investment?