"a 6-acre wetlands park broke ground earlier this year. The first phase will include 422,000 square feet of office space, 160,000 square feet of specialty retail/restaurant space and 407 luxury apartment homes. Eventually the project, which is near the future Route 28 Silver Line Metro station, will encompass 2 million square of office, residential, and retail space."

Wetlands park? With these kinds of definitions, we will never ever have any environmental problems again! Yippee!

by Jazzy on Jan 10, 2009 7:22 pm  

NoVA's idea of "urban" is desolate Rosslyn or big boxy Clarendon or lifeless Ballston. You have to look at this in that context.

by Rich on Jan 10, 2009 8:27 pm  

"Big boxy Clarendon"? I know there's a Barnes and Noble and a small Whole Foods, each of which are maybe 1/3 of a big box individually. Which "big box" am I missing that would define Clarendon as such?

by Joey on Jan 10, 2009 9:45 pm  

@Joey, You obviously have never been to a real city. As an urban place, Clarendon is joke, filled with chain businesses and parking structures.

by Rich on Jan 10, 2009 9:49 pm  

Clarendon and Ballston are undeniably inferior to Adams Morgan, but it's absurd to suggest they're "jokes", "not real", or "big boxy". For places built predominantly over the last two to three decades, or compared to the best neighborhoods in many other cities, they are phenomenal, and neither has anything like a suburban big box.

They've got legit problems, but for goodness sake, let's not go overboard. Clarendon *is* a good urban environment and it is getting better. That it's not freaking Tribeca doesn't make it bad.

by BeyondDC on Jan 10, 2009 10:49 pm  

Who cares if they're big box chains or not. Making those designations takes you from the realm of urban planning to complaining about what businesses settle where. No one should be able to shop at big box stores just because our educated elites deem it so.

by MPC on Jan 10, 2009 11:03 pm  

Rich, cmon, you're being a little unfair here. I wouldn't choose to live in Arlington necessarily (just based on my personal preferences), but it is an urban environment. A mature urban environment, no, but it's a very dense, transit-friendly, mixed use, and walkable place. Even Ballston, and to a lesser extent Crystal City. We should be encouraging things along these lines in NoVa. You can't recreate NYC, Boston, San Fran, and DC in NoVa.

by SG on Jan 10, 2009 11:10 pm  

I've realized that 'walkable urban environments' are codewords here for yuppie enclaves along Conn. Avenue. If there was so much damn demand for 'walkable urban environments' every house on the East side of DC would be priced out, and don't say it's not feasible because prior to WWII it was primarily middle-class families.

by MPC on Jan 10, 2009 11:14 pm  

Clarendon and Ballston are undeniably inferior to Adams Morgan

I guess that's a matter of opinion. At least you're less likely to be shot or stabbed in Clarendon or Ballston.

by Adrian on Jan 11, 2009 12:26 am  

@Rich, way to be as patronizing as possible. I don't deny that Clarendon isn't as established as other areas, but most of it is a decade old, ha ha, you want Rome in a day?! And you said it was "big boxy" when there aren't any "big boxes" there . . . so I'm not sure what you were referring to. It sounds like you're complaining about ownership, not land use.

by Joey on Jan 11, 2009 1:02 am  

How are Clarendon and Ballston "inferior" to Adams Morgan? They're very different places. Inferior? Do you just mean less dense?

by Scott on Jan 11, 2009 2:02 am  

Interestingly, the street connectivity of a region influences the size of the boxes. The most disconnected street networks that channel traffic onto the most heavily used arterials and freeways support the largest power centers and biggest of big boxes. Seth Harry explains how and why it works that way.

by Laurence Aurbach on Jan 11, 2009 9:00 am  

I disagree with the characterization that Clarendon is all big box. We discussed this back in June. Clarendon has maintained some of the older low rise buildings along the commercial corridor which are occupied by businesses like Hard times, Mexicali Blues, Ri Ra, Faccia Luna, Boulevard Woodgrill, Whitlows, Clarendon Ballroom, Clarendon Grill, Iota, Revolution Cycle, and Galaxy Hut. Sure there is a Crate & Barrel, Cheesecake Factory and La Tasca but they've maintained some balance.

by Paul S on Jan 11, 2009 10:05 am  

MPC - When the east side of DC has rail transit access comparable to Connecticut Ave, then your point may be valid. Short of that, the area is *not* as walkable and therefore does *not* meet the minimum standards of those seeking the lifestyle. The fact that comparable units cost more near Metro stations suggests there is plenty of unmet demand.

As for what makes Arlington inferior to Adams Morgan - street diversity and the number of unique buildings per block. Clarendon is better than Ballston, but a block of several 25-foot-wide buildings is better than a block of 1 200 foot long one. And I say this as someone who lives in Ballston.

by BeyondDC on Jan 11, 2009 8:42 pm  

Do you have more information about this? I am assuming that it is fairfax county since this is south of the toll road rather than Town of Herndon. It is a little miss leading to say that Herndon is getting a new town center if this isn't in the Town of Herndon. Do you have a link to a larger version of the map? I am still trying to work out where silver line station would be in connection to this, my guess was this it would be here.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.959717,-77.419496&spn=0.004722,0.010997&t=h&z=17

by Ian on Jan 11, 2009 9:06 pm  

I've been to Clarendon, more than once. Nice place to find large big box stores (my reason for a recent visit), but it's a dead pedestrian environment and filled with high rise condos with porches that nobody uses. It's dead compared with just about any lively part of the district (much of the Conn Ave corridor, Adams-Morgan---where I once lived, Mount Pleasant, Logan circle, Capitol Hill, the list goes on). Even compared with Columbia Heights which has much in the way of chain retail and dysfunction, it isn't that inviting, although at least you can buy useful things in Columbia Heights and they have a Giant. NoVA is a lot like Atlanta, which is why it will never get far beyond the model for Clarendon.

by Rich on Jan 11, 2009 11:10 pm  

Rich, again, you're not naming any "large big box" stores, even though you keep repeating the same thing (possibly because there aren't any big box stores in Clarendon?). Columbia Heights has a Target, a Best Buy, a Marshalls, etc. None of those are in Clarendon.

You say Clarendon is full of "high rise condos" and a dead pedestrian environment. Clarendon is the least tall section of the Orange line corridor (by zoning design, for some reason), with most buildings in the 3-storey range. It's also got more pedestrian activity than many places in the District and, from my experience living in Atlanta, virtually anywhere in that City.

by Joey on Jan 12, 2009 1:17 am  

Rich, it just occurred to me. Are you thinking of Pentagon City, rather than Clarendon?

by Joey on Jan 12, 2009 1:18 am  

^

That's the only explanation that makes sense. Otherwise Rich is just flat out wrong. He may as well be suggesting that Dupont Circle is a farming community.

by BeyondDC on Jan 12, 2009 10:42 am  

The Arrowbrook layout is going to suffer from its proximity to the Dulles Toll Road. The light to enter is about 150 meters from the lights to get on and off of the 267. It is those lights that are problematic in the Toll Road design. Rather than traditional cloverleaf exits, the Toll Road has lights on each onramp/offramp with left turns often backing up onto the traffic lanes. Presumably they thought this design would be adequate because the toll booths themselves would slow the flow and the lights would never be the bottleneck. However, the popularity of SmartTag/EasyPass means that the lights there are always overloaded. Putting Arrowbrook Center there is going to cause some serious traffic issues. I wonder who is going to loan them the money do get this thing done? And who is going to rent all of that office space?

by matt mcknight on Jan 12, 2009 1:11 pm  

I work right across the street from this proposed site. It is sad that it is being built up and I too question who is going to lease there. There are tons of office buildings in the area begging for leases. Are national chain stores going to open yet another branch when Reston Town center isn't that far away? I guess it might draw in tenants from crappier suburban office park designs and allow for those sites to be rebuilt in a denser fashion. I dunno. Good luck.

by NikolasM on Jan 12, 2009 1:54 pm  

Clarendon/Courthouse has all kinds of Viet/Thai/Indian/Moroccan restaurants, pedestrian neighborhoods, and two more metro stops than Adams-Morgan does, and not only can you walk down Wilson Blvd without getting shot, you can send your kids to the neighborhood schools

I guess Adams-Morgan is better if you like street level apartments with bars in the windows and need that 15 min walk to the nearest Metro in order to get your exercise

by Doug on Jan 13, 2009 8:34 pm