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Easier, safer, less stressful navigation of the Springfield Interchange for over 440,000 vehicles a day is the promise of the eight-year long improvement project nearing completion at the junctions of I-95, I-395 and I-495 in Northern Virginia. The final phases of the $700 million improvement project of more than 50 bridges are to be completed in late 2007 according to the Virginia Department of Transportation
(VDOT).
That’s good news for travelers and commuters moving through. Residents of Springfield, meanwhile, have enjoyed improved local road and bridge connections for several years. They can see an end to the disruptions the huge project has brought to their unincorporated community. They realize that even larger transportation benefits ahead will attract new residents and businesses.
Residents now are thinking about something bigger than transportation – the opportunity to “Reinvent Springfield.” Outside experts suggest the community can leverage market forces, new private investments and its new transportation infrastructure to build itself into a new regional center with a new town center at the same time. It is an interesting process of cultural development that any community or locality struggling with growth and public investment issues might find useful.
The advice for Springfield comes from a team of planners, transportation specialists and development company executives assembled by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) at the request of Fairfax County Supervisors Dana Kauffman and Elaine McConnell. The non-profit ULI convenes such panels on request as a part of its mission to promote land use that enhances the total environment.
The request to look at Springfield as a whole was prompted by announced private sector plans to invest in a new mixed-use town center (KSI Midtown) west of I-95 and up to a billion dollars to redevelop an up-market Springfield Mall (Vornado Realty) with new office buildings and residences east of I-95. Springfield Mall already draws 10 to 12 million visitors a year.
The ULI huddled with county planners and officials, interviewed dozens of Springfield residents and business executives and reviewed statistics and plans.
The planners tried to factor into the equation not only what happens after
completion of the Springfield Interchange Project
but long-term uses for a 67-acre General Services Administration (GSA) warehouse complex,
which used to be out in the middle of nowhere, and the Engineering Proving Ground (EPG) site that could draw 20,000 new employees as a result of Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). The GSA and EPG sites together could add 12 million square feet of mixed-use space, about two-thirds of what is possible, to the Springfield community in the decades ahead.
After five days, the expert panel reported on strengths it found for Springfield in a very competitive market. Springfield has a great regional location and is in a population growth corridor. It now enjoys excellent local and regional access and a transit node (the Franconia/Springfield Metro and Virginia Rail Express stations). It exhibits vibrant ethnic diversity and a positive local attitude towards growth. Building on those strengths, one expert suggests, is what it takes to avoid “growth by chance” and get to “growth by choice” through positive community involvement.
The Springfield regional center, according to ULI, could be marked by improved auto and transit orientations, a new live/work environment, modern design and architecture and the mall, big box stores, civic spaces and entertainment opportunities. The Springfield town center, ULI suggests, could add a more pedestrian orientation to a new street grid, maintain a more traditional look in its live/work spaces and showcase ethnic strengths with restaurants, markets, neighborhood retail and community celebration spaces.
This forward look gives Springfield residents and county planners a different way to view the aging properties, patchwork development, architectural disharmony and difficult circulation that now marks much of the community. Problems look like potential. Such vision helps even the professionals at KSI and Vornado see how their discrete plans can serve as a catalyst to a broader “market-driven master plan.”
But it will take more than a vision to move Springfield past an identity that starts as a point on the VDOT map of the regional highway system. “Reinventing Springfield,” the experts conclude, requires a dedicated effort to establish a new identity and to market that brand. It requires a development plan, but also leaders who act. It requires a public sector that leverages private investment, exhibits a sense of urgency and follows through on its commitments.
Green space, a sky line, street life, an exhibition and event center and “those places visitors stop to take the classic postcard snapshot” just don’t happen by accident.
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May 30, 2006
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