More details emerged Tuesday about the lucrative New Carrollton station project as dozens of developers, architects, planners and investors flooded a project meeting at Metro’s headquarters.
“It could be a game changer,” G. Neel Teague, principal at Stout and Teague in McLean, said of the 39-acre site.
Now mostly parking lot and unused green space, Metro envisions a high-density development that would include office, retail, hotel and residential buildings with an emphasis on commercial building.
Attendees Tuesday said the flexibility of the site — and Metro’s new approach to it — made the opportunity to build there more attractive in a still-tenuous economy. Several of the developers present have portfolios that include other works around Metrorail stations like Huntington and Silver Spring.
Instead of asking for full (and costly) proposals for what would be Metro’s first large-scale, transit-oriented development in Prince George’s County, the agency is asking for submissions of qualifications from developers or development teams.
After the team is selected in December, the following year will be devoted to planning and designing the site with input from Metro and local and state jurisdictions.
“This is really going to create an opportunity for consultation with the community, which is critical for a project like this,” Teague said. “You can’t just go it alone on this kind of project.”
After the site design is approved, which Metro expects will be in 2012, the land value will be appraised for the first development phase and ground rent set. Ground rent for the following phases of the site will be determined in the same way, which makes the development’s progress more adaptable to the changing economy.
“In the past there have been these 10- to 15-year time frames [for these projects], then the market changes and the numbers don’t work,” said Steven E. Goldin, Metro’s director of real estate.
In addition, if approved by Metro’s board, developers will have the option to share their profits with Metro in exchange for a lower ground rent.
“It’s an innovative process,” said Jair Lynch, founder of Jair Lynch Development Partners in D.C., who said he came to hear more about opportunities for minority investors.
Project bids for the new site are due Nov. 5; Metro is scheduled to select a developer Dec. 16.
