County Board chair to focus on economic development, office vacancies in 2025

Arlington’s likely 2025 County Board chairman has economic-development and property-repurposing initiatives atop his to-do list for the coming year.

“One out of four square feet [of office space in the county] is unoccupied,” Takis Karantonis on Dec. 10 told members of Arlington Senior Democrats. “It’s the highest for us ever, and one of the highest in the nation. What is worse, it’s not looking like the business is coming back.”

The challenges of ongoing commercial vacancies in a post-Covid world has led county leaders to adopt new strategies, including streamlining processes for developers wanting to convert existing office properties to homes.

But the office-vacancy-rate problem, which pre-dates the pandemic, has put at risk Arlington’s 60-year strategy that relies on the commercial sector bringing in the tax revenue to support a county budget fast approaching $1.7 billion a year.

The office-vacancy rate has pushed more of the county’s tax burden only the shoulders of homeowners. Where once the residential tax base represented less than 50% of total real-estate taxes paid, it is now 57%, Karantonis said.

As commercial assessments declined, property owners last spring were hit with an increased tax rate ladled atop higher home assessments. It was a double-whammy that hadn’t occurred in five years.

“It makes people grumpy,” came a voice from the luncheon audience at Busboys & Poets. To which Karantonis responded he hoped the county government could “avoid making them more grumpy” moving forward.

Chairmanship of the County Board rotates among members on a calendar-year basis. Karantonis, who has served as vice chair under Libby Garvey in 2024, is all but guaranteed to be selected for the top post when Board members hold their annual organizational meeting at the start of the year.

Serving as Board chair provides few additional powers beyond that of the other four members, but it does give the occupant a bully pulpit. Karantonis and other Board members will lay out their priorities at the Jan. 6 organization meeting.

Governance Changes on the Agenda?

As chair, Karantonis may have to decide how to address proposals by some civic activists seeking changes to Arlington’s governance structure, which has been in place for more than 90 years.

Those activists want the Board expanded from five to at least seven seats and to end the current election cycle that sees at least one Board member on the ballot each year.

Over the past quarter-century, Democrats have held near complete dominance of the local political system in Arlington. Whether the five Board members, all Democrats, will be willing to allow tinkering remains an open question, although any or all of the Board members could reference the matter at the upcoming organizational meeting.

That gathering also will mark the arrival of the newest Board member. JD Spain, Sr., in November was elected to succeed Libby Garvey, who is departing after 12 years.

With Spain’s arrival and Garvey’s departure, the average length of tenure of the five incumbents at the start of 2025 will be only 2.5 years in office. Garvey’s service of just over 12.5 years on the Board equals the combined tenures of all four of her current colleagues.

Trump Victory Causing Local Democrats Heartburn

The Board’s Jan. 6 organizational will come two weeks prior to the return of Donald Trump, which elected leaders in the inner D.C. suburbs — nearly all Democrats — fear could be problematic for the region. In addition, there are concerns that the region’s economic health is beginning to sag.

“There is a lot of disruption potential — it can be political choppy waters, it can be economic choppy waters,” Karantonis said of the coming year.

The likely Board chair acknowledged that the Arlington electorate, which has been reliably Democratic since the mid-1980s and became more so starting in 2016, moved back a little to Republicans in the 2024 election.

And that, he said, could help the statewide GOP in Virginia’s 2025 statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

“They think they are on a roll right now,” Karantonis said of Virginia Republicans. “They are not so off.”

Next year could prove “a tough election” for Democrats in the Commonwealth, he predicted.

Derick Malis, who attended the Senior Democrats’ luncheon, said Virginia Democrats in 2025 and beyond could have an unlikely benefactor living just across the Potomac.

“One of the biggest [Democratic] allies for the four years is going to be Trump,” Malis said if the incoming president and his agenda. “A lot of people are going to see through it.”

Karantonis was first elected to the Board in a 2020 special election necessitated by the death of Erik Gutshall. He won a full four-year term in 2021 and has told ARLnow he plans to seek re-election in 2025.

A native of Greece, Karantonis served as director of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization — now known as the Columbia Pike Partnership — before he was elected to office.