Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker is standing at the Branch Avenue Metro station on a cold, windy morning, surveying the sea of concrete surrounding the suburban station.
It’s mostly parking lots and green space, but Baker sees something else. In the distance, two tightly built residential communities give a hint of his vision.
“Everybody’s focusing back on the Washington region and here we are, Prince George’s County, as the only underdeveloped and undeveloped Metro sites,” he said.
In Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, planners are trying to overhaul their outdated suburban Metro stations to accommodate the demand for easy transit access and walkable communities from their growing populations.
| Sampling of large-scale developments |
| Twinbrook: 26-acre village center by JBG Cos., mix of uses including multifamily residential, convenience retail, restaurant and office White Flint: Three developments, 2.7 million square feet of residential, 3 million square feet of retail and office among three developers |
| Wheaton: Roughly 10 acres in three parcels, B.F. Saul Co. developing conceptual plan |
| New Carrollton: Metro reviewing developer proposals for 35-acre property; Forest City reportedly has been selected |
| Branch Avenue: 38-acre site, no requests for developer released |
Experts say the region has outgrown the initial park-and-ride vision for Metro’s outer suburban stations that opened in the 1980s and ’90s. Today’s mixed-use development goals are a reversal of an old mind-set that placed transit away from commercial corridors.
“In Maryland, I think they lost focus,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, adding that the counties have favored development along major highways such as Interstates 270 and 495 instead of near Metro.
But planners now point to Arlington’s bustling Rosslyn-Ballston corridor as a version of what could happen for Maryland’s corridors.
The benefits are enticingâ as the tax revenue generated by that three-mile corridor is roughly one-third of Arlington County’s entire tax base. The area’s amenities take drivers off the roads and create reverse commuters on Metro, said Robert Brosnan, Arlington County’s planning director.
Unlike Maryland’s suburbs, Arlington County embraced Metro’s Orange Line as an engine for economic growth, lobbying for an underground system that shot through what in the 1980s was a dying commercial corridor.
“We weren’t looking for a commuter rail system,” Brosnan said. “We were looking to build a community around transportation.”
Now, Maryland is playing catch-up.
Prince George’s County’s development effort around Metro is just beginning. Baker said the county has been hampered for years by a poor reputation.
“Let’s just say it — for a long time people didn’t want to develop in Prince George’s County because the perception was it’s not going to be fair and you’re not going to know all the rules upfront,” he said.
But many believe that image will change with the redevelopment of the Green Line’s Branch Avenue station and the Orange Line’s New Carrollton station.
“What Metro has always done is … select developers based on price,” said Steve Goldin, Metro’s director of real estate. “Now we pick you based on financial strength and experience and we’re going to design the projects together.”
On the Red Line, major redevelopments are targeted at White Flint, Twinbrook and Wheaton stations but the long distance between stops gives this effort a different flow than Arlington’s.
“You’ll see these spikes at the Metro stops,” said Rollin Stanley, Montgomery County’s planning director. “And the further you get from the heart of the region, those blips get lower.”
