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Tysons Taskforce on the home stretch
After scores of public meetings, several rounds of analysis and three years of disagreements and information sessions and legos stacked on table maps, the Tysons Land Use Taskforce's plan for thirty years of development in Tysons Corner is starting to take shape. Last week the group brought the latest iteration of their plans to the public, presenting two land use prototypes and two traffic plans for consideration and comment.
“Right now, Tysons is a perfect storm for what does not work” said G.B. Arrington of P.B. Placemaking, the head consultant to the Tysons Taskforce.
By April, the information in those alternatives will be distilled into a proposed comprehensive plan for Tysons Corner, setting development standards for the “edge city” that Fairfax County believes Tysons will become with the arrival of metro to Dulles. In recent months, rail to Dulles has become less and less of a certainty, but all of the taskforce's work assumes the train will come. “Without metro, our plan doesn't apply. It's just a dusty book on a shelf,” said Clark Tyler, taskforce chair. Even though the group's deadline is relatively close, and the current plans contain a mountain of data, some feel that the taskforce plans are light on specifics.
“There's no attempt to discuss infrastructure or what we need to get us there ... I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I just click my heels and I'm there,” said Rob Bailey of the McLean Citizen's Association.
The biggest unanswered and most asked question about the taskforce's plans center around road infrastructure and the specific densities they will allow in Tysons. To both questions, taskforce representatives say they aren't ready for that level of specificity yet.
Despite that info gap, it's clear that the Tysons of the future will be pretty different if the taskforce's plan is followed. It will include far more streets than it currently does. “Tysons doesn't have very many streets ... but there are a lot of drivers trying to use them,” said Arrington. The buildings in Tysons will be vastly taller, possibly thirty stories at the metro stations, and there will be many more of them. This denser taller Tysons will be connected internally by some sort of circulator system, such as a street car or network of buses. If the best predictions of the taskforce's traffic modelers are true, it will also be at least as congested as it is today, a disappointing fact for many of the public to accept.
“Whatever happens there will be more congestion,” said Arrington.
The taskforce's plans will be based on the principles of Transit Oriented Development, a planning philosophy that focuses on eliminating car trips by concentrating mixed use buildings near each other, and encouraging alternative transportation. TOD is based around high concentrations of density, which has earned the taskforce the ire of citizens in the communities that surround Tysons
“We don't want all that density to overwhelm our town” said Jane Seeman, mayor of Vienna.
TOD is based around high densities of people and development, making it a hard sell for residents of Vienna and McLean, communities that value their relative small size. Meanwhile, to the business community, which county leaders are careful to include in discussing Tysons' future, TOD is a blessing.
“It's easier for our employees if they don't have to sit in traffic to get to work, or they can live right around the corner,” explained Frank Chamber, who works for a Tysons based aviation company
The ultimate expression of this philosophy is reflected in Prototype B, which features the highest planned density of all the taskforce's projections, envisioning a future where 90,000 people will have moved to Tysons Corner by 2030. In Prototype B, this mass of people is accommodated by a ribbon of high density growth that surrounds a dedicated circulator system.
However, Arrington says he believes that none of the scenarios will be the preferred alternative suggested as the comprehensive plan by the task office. "It will be some sort of Frankenstein's monster with pieces of everything we worked on ... we'll keep what works” said Arrington.
Email the reporter at mtayloe@timespapers.com
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