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@TC - I also use the eastern spur of the Red line (thought not daily for work, I live and work in downtown silver spring and travel down for pleasure). There is parking at Takoma and Fort Totten to capture people who live 2-3 miles out from these stations who don't want to walk that far to take the train, and probably find the bus not much more convenient. I'd hardly argue these areas as "dense", they are older suburbs, but are almost all low rise apartments, single family attached or detached homes, and single level retail. Anything more than 3-4 story apartments on top of these parking lots would be seen as too dense, and a huge NIMBY fight would start. At those low redevelopment densities, it probably does not make sense to create below ground (or above ground and hidden behind buildings) parking that has to both accommodate the project, and the Metro parking. Maybe once all the surrounding development potential is gone, that will change, but using Fort Totten as an example, there is still a number of projects including the walmart project, that is proposed and still unbuilt near by.

@ Richard - in Glenmont, the sector plan already called for a mixed use town center type development there, so it would not have been against the local plan to do something more with the site. That said, i defer back to my comments made to TC - the cost would have become an issue again. The County/State/WMATA could of helped fund the parking for a mixed use project possibly, but Glenmont also has a lot of redevelopment potential near by that has not happened, and i'd argue would need to happen before working on their direct property is viable. This is the same problem with Wheaton - the Council feels it's better to redevelop the rest of Wheaton before talking about redeveloping the WAMATA parking lot, because once the available land goes down, the viability of developing that lot goes up.

The land next to the parking garage is slated to become the new location of the local fire station anyway, as the grade separation of Georgia Avenue and Randolph Road is forcing the relocation of the current fire house. That project in itself could probably spark it's own blog post and comment section of dissatisfaction.

by Gull on Apr 27, 2012 4:33 pm • link • report