For the e-zine this week, I delved deeper into the work done by the Tysons Corner Land Use Task Force than I had been able to do for an earlier post (“Is Tysons Corner Beyond Redemption.”) My conclusions are largely the same, but they’re better documented — and they come with cool graphics and maps!
The point I emphasized in the e-zine is that while the task force’s vision (“Tysons Corner: Path to the 21st Century“) for redesigning Tysons Corner is awesome, it is also incredibly expensive. Over and above the multibillion-dollar cost of constructing the heavy rail line, the initiative entails an estimated $1 billion expenditure for road and highway improvements to improve ingress and egress from the area, rebuilding the internal road network into a grid system, setting up a “circulator” route served by bus or trolley, bike lanes, stream restoration, storm water controls, fire, police and rescue facilities, a performing arts center — even public art. As I said: Awesome.
If someone has tallied up what it will all cost, however, I could not find the summary on the task force website. I’m expecting that the grand total will make jaws drop…
Which leads to the question of who will pay for all those improvements. Inevitably, property owners will bear a share of the burden. Although the task force has identified some conceptual options — Community Development Authorities, Tax Increment Financing, and the like — there are very few details. The job of assigning particular costs to particular constituencies has yet to begin. When people learn what they have to pay in higher taxes, proffers or whatever, the howling in Fairfax County will sound like the dungeons of Mordor.
Inevitably, landowners will conclude that the benefit of increased density is largely illusory. Consider, the “prototype B” scenario that members of the task force appear to like the best would add 83 million square feet of commercial, retail and residential space. If half of that is commercial, we’re talking about 40 million square feet — nearly double the commercial space there now. Projecting 600,000 square feet annual absorption rate between 1990 and 2006 — an optimistic assumption given the likely slowdown in federal spending in Northern Virginia — that space will take about 70 years to absorb.
I question whether it all adds up. For details, see “Salvaging Tysons.”
