The Washington Metro is adding a new station to its rail system, and — surprise! — it is over budget and years behind schedule. Known as Potomac Yard, the station is designed to serve a high-density, mixed-use development that is being built on a former train yard located on the border between Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.
Metro’s solution to the cost issue is, essentially, to build half a station: one that would serve the north half of the Potomac Yard development but not the south half. Metro knew this decision would be controversial because retailers and apartment renters were signing leases in the south half confident in the knowledge that their shops and homes would soon be a few steps away from the a Metro station.
For example, a group called National Industries for the Blind (NIB) agreed to build its world headquarters in Potomac Yard. The group “would not have picked out Potomac Yard town center without knowing Metro would be coming,” said the developer in 2016. Metro is “absolutely vital.”
Until the new station was built, NIB employees have to walk to the Braddock Road station, which is much further away. Now that the new station is being built with only a north entrance, Braddock Road will still be closer to NIB’s building than walking to the north entrance.
To minimize the controversy over this decision, Metro swore local government officials to secrecy about the decision not to serve the south part of the development for nearly a year — thus giving developers plenty of time to lease more spaces. Not surprisingly, some of the people who signed those leases, including NIB, are upset.
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It’s easy to understand why Arlington and Alexandria would want this new development and the station serving it: high-density development equals more tax dollars flowing into their coffers. It is harder to understand why Metro would want to have anything to do with it. Potomac Yard is on the Blue Line, which is already filled to capacity during rush hour. Metro ridership is declining, but most of the decline is taking place during non-rush-hour periods. Thus, every new rush-hour commuter who settles in Potomac Yard will simply displace another commuter who will probably end up taking Uber or Lyft instead of trying to squeeze on crowded Metro trains.
Metro itself isn’t paying for the station. Instead, it is being paid for using tax-increment financing, development impact fees, and other so-called value capture taxes on the new development. Even with only a north entrance to the station, the new station is expected to cost $320 million, or $52 million more than the previous projection (which included both entrances). “Alexandria residents outside Potomac Yard won’t be contributing tax revenue to the project,” the city promises.
But that’s just another lie. Any funds coming from tax-increment financing would otherwise have gone to provide other city services to Potomac Yard, such as schools, fire, and police. Now, to provide those services, other people in Arlington and Alexandria will have to either pay higher taxes or accept a lower level of services for the taxes they already pay.
Supposedly, the purpose of dense urban development is to encourage more transit ridership. But since there is no spare transit capacity, that won’t work. Instead, we can see that the real purpose is to boost tax revenues to the cities in which the dense developments take place. Everyone else gets cheated, either by getting less transit service than they expected, paying higher taxes, or getting lower urban services.
So this is just like Hudson Yards in New York.
Build over a former rail station with some new development. The difference, is DC isnt allowed to build highrises so the amount of development DC can engage in is limited. Since 1910 DC has subject to the Heights of Buildings act which prohibits scale of buildings on dc streets. No building may be taller than the width of the building to the opposing side of the street plus 20 feet. In essence most of DC commercial buildings are between 7-10 stories and no taller than 120 feet.
This has turned Washington into a sprawl zone moving its commercial zones out to bethesda, crystal city and arlington. If the buildings were allowed to be 150 feet higher in the heydey the city wouldn’t look all that bad. Especially if it were the architecture of the turn of the century.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/New_York_Times_Building_41_Park_Row_from_north.jpg/220px-New_York_Times_Building_41_Park_Row_from_north.jpg
instead were gonna get a lot of glass and concrete.
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/modern-architecture-washington-dc-47805115.jpg
*Correction: if the buildings were permitted to be minimum of 150 meters high with set backs for light.
While 61 percent of D.C. residents approve of the Height Act, Vox Executive Editor Matthew Yglesias argues that the Height Act is stunting Washington, D.C. by limiting the amount of office space in the city and raising rent and hotel prices.
At the time when the Height Act began, was there enough space for everyone who lived there or wanted to live in DC. In 1920 it’s Population was 330,000. On top of that, this is way back before the Great Society, before World War II, and before the New Deal so the actual federal government and associated office district was much smaller and more downtown space was used for housing. Not saying we need 40-50 story buildings. But less than 30 wouldn’t hurt in downtown or a corridor along K Street.
In a 2017 article by Washington Post, DC has 14 MILLION sq feet of vacant office space. There are more than 5 million square feet of office space under construction, meaning that older office buildings will likely continue to be passed up by business renters. the federal government simply don’t need the same amount of space they once did. (There is a lot less physical file storage and rooms full of secretaries these days.) Even if an business or agency did need the space, there is plenty of cheaper competition in Virginia and Maryland, Tysons Corner is……..jokingly refered to as DC’s file cabinet, but it’s where businesses close to DC find cheaper MUCH cheaper office space. DC needs living space, not office space and that’s not gonna happen, cause no one wants to live in a modified office building ugly by concrete and glass.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-7-most-heinously-ugly-government-buildings-in-washington?utm_term=.ham8ybloG#.jxAqV68Q7
I doubt DC height limits apply to Alexandria or Arlington.
@Antiplanner
I never said they did.
My argument is, the height law makes DC development Sprawl out into those places. The height limit made sense in the early 1900’s when the population was 300,000, but now it’s 693,000. Baltimore is 621,000 but the population density of Washington is nearly 50% greater. Without highrises (or midrises, 100 meters or more) DC is in a housing crunch where the typical real estate and rents are vastly higher. On the other hand who wants to live in DC unless your job is tied to the government somehow.
They got plenty of vacant office space, but no one’s gonna live in these concrete monstrosity. Mies van der Rohe made his best work with Seagrams and the Barcelona chair.
A while back the Antiplanner wrote a piece how “Someone has calculated that it would be less expensive for San Francisco workers to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Las Vegas and commute by air than to rent a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. They reasoned that a one-bedroom in San Francisco is about $3,100 a month while a two-bedroom in Las Vegas is about $1,000 a month, and four-day-a-week airfares would be about $1,100 a month. Even with local transport, Las Vegas is less expensive than San Francisco.”
The same could apply here. Baltimore and DC are seperated by 40 miles. But Baltimore is significantly cheaper. So much so, Baltimore has started a campaign, “Live Baltimore” to attract new residents (and tax money of course) A same sized town house is 1/3rd the price and I believe apartment rents are nearly half. Live in Baltimore, Work in DC. The difference is instead of the 568 miles from SF to Vegas it’s only 40 miles, still commutes would be over 80 miles per day and over 20,000 miles per year, work miles alone.
Upon reading the city of Alexandria page you linked to, the difference in walking distance will now be an extra 300+ feet from the south side of the station. Why is this a big deal? 300 feet is about 4 suburban tract homes in length!
tailsH,
According to what I read, most of the people who the south entrance was supposed to serve will be closer to the Braddock Road station than the north entrance. So they are spending $320 million on a new station and half the people it is supposed to serve won’t use it.