MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, knitting behind bars, why a correctional facility in a Maryland is getting national attention for providing prisoners an outlet for their creative sides, but first, stitching together a compromise over the future of Alexandria's waterfront.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAfter months of heated debate and the final marathon meeting, the Alexandria City Council approved the plan this weekend to reshape the city's waterfront area. It clears the way for park space, commercial development and a pair of hotels, but the compromise has not put an end to some of the bitterness that defined the debate about the waterfront. Joining us to explore what the final plan calls for and why its opponents have pledged to continue fighting against it, Michael Pope.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHe covers Virginia politics for WAMU and for the Connection Newspapers. He's also the author of the book "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." Michael Pope, good to see you again. It seems like just yesterday you were here discussing this issue. I guess it was almost two weeks ago.

MR. MICHAEL POPEIt's great to be back.

NNAMDIWell, if you'd like to join the conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. Are you an Alexandria resident or frequent visitor to Old Town? Do you think the waterfront is sufficiently accessible, sufficiently developed? 800-433-8850. You can also send email to kojo@wamu.org, a tweet, @kojoshow, or simply go to our website, kojoshow.org. Michael, this was a long time coming. When you were here just a couple of weeks ago talking about the knock-down, drag-out debate that preceded this weekend's vote, what exactly does this final plan that the City Council approved this weekend call for?

POPEWell, the main vision, as was articulated by the planners Saturday, is that the waterfront should be opened up to the public and that you could be able to walk from the southern part of the waterfront all the way to the northern part of the waterfront without being obstructed by industrial uses. Currently, there are several places where you have to go west and not be on the waterfront.

POPESo the long-range vision here is that there would be a completely accessible public waterfront. And, you know, part of doing that was taking these formerly industrial locations and doing something different with them, and that's really where the controversy came in because what the city wanted to do is increase density and allow hotels, which created a firestorm of opposition.

NNAMDIWhat ultimately paved the way for the compromise on hotels? It's my understanding that the prior plan called for three, but on Saturday, the council voted to approve two.

POPEThat's right. So the whip count going into Saturday on the votes was that there were four leaning in favor, two leaning against and one undecided. It was that one undecided vote that suggested the compromise that was eventually suggested, which was changing, as you said, from three hotels to two. Now, the planning commission, when they approved the waterfront plan, actually set the number of rooms per so-called boutique hotels at 150. So the previous plan had 450 rooms at -- with three hotels. The updated plan, the one that was approved on Saturday, has two hotels, so that's 300 rooms.

NNAMDIOne hundred fifty rooms less than the original plan. Just as a refresher, what were the issues that divided the different camps in the debate?

POPEAllowing hotels was an issue that was divisive, but, frankly, the issue that got people much more angry, and they're still angry about, is the increase in density. The plan that was adopted on Saturday increases the square footage. Right now, there's -- these three parcels we're talking about, there's existing square footage of about 300,000. The plan that was approved on Saturday has about 800,000 square feet.

POPESo that's a pretty dramatic increase in what's there now currently. However, the planning officials will say that the buildings that are there now are not using the maximum allowable density under what they're zoned for because they're smaller scaled compared to what the current zoning is. So, in reality, the allowable zoning there is about 650,000 square feet, so that's an increase of 650,000 square feet to about 800,000 square feet.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Michael Pope. He covers Virginia politics for WAMU 88.5 and for the Connection Newspapers. He's also the author of the book "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." We're talking about a vote taken on Saturday by the Alexandria Council to redevelop the Alexandria waterfront, inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. How would you change the look and feel of Alexandria and the waterfront along the Potomac?

NNAMDI800-433-8850 or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Ask a question or make a comment there. The groups fighting against the waterfront plan say this is not over. You reported that they've pledged to file legal challenges. What are their next moves expected to be?

POPEWell, the next move would be for -- there's a series of landowners that have filed what's known as a protest petition. And essentially what's happening here is that the -- there are landowners that have -- that own property adjacent to the parcels that have been rezoned that wanted to call for a super majority vote. Now, it's important to note here that the 5-2 vote that happened on Saturday is not a super majority vote because that would be a 6-1 vote.

POPESo what happened on Saturday actually fell one vote short of being the super majority. So these landowners are calling for the requirement that a super majority be needed to pass this plan. They've tried to put their protest petition -- they've tried to file this with city officials on Friday. They were not able to do that because the official determination had yet to be made at that point.

POPEThey tried again on Saturday during the public hearing to file the protest petition. It was not accepted at that time. So my understanding is that is going to be filed today likely, although I have to say, Kojo, I came -- I called the planning department just before I came on the air to give you and your listeners an update and has not yet been filed, but I would expect that if not today then tomorrow.

NNAMDIWhat would have to happen for the council's decision to be overturned?

POPESo here's the process, as I understand it as it's going to move forward. There are five landowners that have hired an attorney that's representing them. He's the one that spoke at the public hearing. He is going to file these protest petitions with the planning department. At that time, they will schedule a hearing with the Board of Zoning Appeals. That's sort of the first step in the process.

POPEAnd the Board of Zoning Appeals will make a determination as to whether or not the planning director made the right call when she rejected the protest petition. So I know from talking to them that the lawyer -- well, the five landowners and the lawyer representing them are potentially interested in taking it further, even if the Board of Zoning Appeals rejects the protest petition that they would take this to the circuit court.

POPENow, here's where things get really interesting, I think. If the circuit court sides with the five landowners who have filed the protest petition -- this is a hypothetical, but if that happens -- then it does have the ability to overturn what happened on Saturday.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Let's go to Oliver in Washington, D.C. Oliver, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

OLIVERHi. Good morning, Kojo. Thank you for taking my call. The reason why I was calling is because I just had a question. Is there any chance that Virginia can mirror its development possibly or draw inspiration from, say, Paris? In France, you've got the Seine River. And there's quite a bit of development along that where you'll see buildings, hotels and restaurants along the river, and it's good for commercial tourist industry business.

NNAMDIYou have jumped right into the middle of this debate. Here's Michael.

POPEWe -- the people that are in support of the plan, when they were testifying on Saturday, many of them said that they would like to see a much more active and vibrant waterfront, specifically restaurants. Several of them mentioned that there really is only one restaurant you can go sit outside. And that's known as the Chart House. So when this -- if it's true, that there are two hotels that will be built, then it's possible that there -- it's likely that there would be a restaurant associated with those hotels, perhaps with some outdoor seating.

POPESo the people that are in support of this plan would like to see this sort of vibrancy that's perhaps suggested by looking at Paris.

NNAMDIAnd the people who say no?

POPEThe people that say no or perhaps (unintelligible), they are uncomfortable with the density, and, again, a lot of this has to do with -- most of the opposition to this plan came from people who live in Old Town, Alexandria. And the -- so what's at stake here is if you live a couple of blocks away from one of these buildings that is going to increase in density from 300,000 square feet to 800,000 square feet, then that comes with all kinds of traffic and parking and pedestrians and congestion essentially. And so their concern is it's just too big, too much for the Old Town waterfront.

NNAMDIOliver, thank you very much for your call. I noticed a lot of the language used by the opposition may sound anti-development because it alleges that developers will have too much control over what happens with that space. But I noticed that the vote in the council broke down along partisan lines, Democratic -- five Democrats voting for it and two Republicans voting against it. Republicans aren't generally associated with being anti-development. What's going on here?

POPEThat is an interesting dichotomy. There was -- the topic of a lot of discussion Saturday night, as a matter of fact, is that you generally think of Republicans as being the party of business, and yet this partisan split on the vote Saturday is kind of counterintuitive to what you might think of as the traditional split between Democrats and Republicans. However, the Democrats are in control of the city and have been for quite some time. And so as the party in power, they're aligned pretty closely with the business interests of the city.

NNAMDIYour book is called "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." Now, here today's D.C. may have a similar issue. Here is Absalom calling from Southeast Washington. Ab Jordan, how are you doing?

AB JORDANI'm doing just fine, Kojo.

NNAMDIYou're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JORDANThank you very much. My ANC advisory neighborhood commission's boundaries extends up to the Virginia shore. One of issues that's being -- that we have been concerned about, and we're trying to get the assistance in dealing with this question, is that the District of Columbia boundaries is the 1791 main high-water mark. The Congress has passed a couple of pieces of legislation that have given jurisdiction to Alexandria.

JORDANBut it's -- I don't know if they have the authority to change the boundary given that Maryland transferred this land to the federal government and the constitution says that you can't make a state from another state without the previous state's permission. So we have some concerns about what is being developed in Alexandria because it has an impact on the District of Columbia. And, actually, we should be controlling what happens on that side of the river. And, again, our boundaries extend up to the 1791 main high-water mark.

JORDANIt has been a tremendous boon in terms of economic development for the City of Alexandria, and they've never made any concessions or anything to the District of Columbia. In fact, you've got boats that leave out of Alexandria from that portion. They collect -- make money and everything, and we don't benefit from it. So that is a question that, at some point, the City of Alexandria and the City Council is going to have to consider.

NNAMDIAnd, Michael Pope, voila, since we're speaking French today. Your book "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." rises up in this dispute.

POPEI'm so glad your caller mentioned the 1791 water mark. It's one of my favorite topics of discussion. So what's happening with the 1791 water mark is that the District of Columbia was being created, and so as a result, Virginia was ceding part of its territory to the newly created district. And Maryland was ceding part of its territory to the newly created district. So they had to do a surveying project to find out exactly what the boundaries were that were being ceded from Maryland and ceded from Virginia.

POPENow, as many of your listeners may know, the Potomac River is owned by Maryland, and so the Maryland boundary is actually on the Virginia shore. So the 1791 water mark was giving the exact boundary between Virginia and Maryland, which was at the shore of Alexandria, of Old Town. So there is this line in the sand, if you will, that's the 1791 water mark that was the basis of a series of lawsuits filed by the Nixon administration to open up public access along the waterfront, and they sued several landowners.

POPEAnd that lawsuit has actually driven a lot of the process that happened on Saturday because the Robinson Terminal had a settlement agreement in the 1980s based on that Nixon administration that had a higher density than the city's current zoning allows. So this -- there's also another interesting issue here that I have to bring up, which is that the boundary between D.C. and Virginia is the shoreline today because of what happened when Maryland ceded the territory.

POPESo there's a really interesting story that I heard recently of a series of teenagers breaking into one of those large party boats on the waterfront and stealing some liquor. So the Alexandria prosecutor was trying to go after these teenagers and, you know, did some legal research, of course, in advance of the case and found out he couldn't prosecute it because the boat was docked in what's technically D.C. So the Alexandria prosecutor had to turn over the whole case to the D.C. prosecutor.

NNAMDIAb Jordan, thank you for raising that issue and giving Michael Pope the opportunity to share with us some of what he has learned in researching this history. I guess we'll have to see how it goes from here. Michael Pope, thank you so much for joining us.

POPEThank you.

NNAMDIMichael Pope covers Virginia politics for WAMU 88.5 and for the Connection Newspapers. His book is called "Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C." We're going to take a short break. When we come back, why a correctional facility in Maryland is getting national attention for providing prisoners with an outlet for their creative sides -- think knitting, think Toastmasters. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.