Around the Corner today;
It has been a very good 6 months for Macerich, as noted by Washington Business Journal. After nabbing Intelsat from their long time headquarters in D.C., they follow up with a local relocation/expansion from Deloitte to the new Tysons Tower for a lease of 3 floors. Who said commercial real estate is stagnant? (BizJournals.com)
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Tesla is having trouble creating their own dealership in Northern Virginia; an area which has shown an openness to high end alternative fuel vehicles (based on hybrid/electric sales). Northern Virginia represents the 4th largest consumer region in the US, so no wonder Tesla wants a piece of the proverbial pie. So what do you think? Would Tesla be just another car dealership, causing poor land use in an urbanizing Tysons Corner, or would the benefit of a local alternative fuel dealership counter-balance that detriment? Either way, the law that is holding up Tesla’s ability to open a dealership is antiquated and confining to businesses (something that Virginia usually avoids). (Yahoo Finance)
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LCOR at Commons of McLean are up for approval by both the Planning Commission (this week) and the Board of Supervisors later this month. The project is the most significant proposal in terms of total residential units, a use that is the most integral redevelopment element of the Tysons Comprehensive Plan. The region is in dire need for more housing units, with both rents and ownership prices growing faster than the median wealth of the region. Adding 2,500 new units to the Northern Virginia inventory over the course of the next several years will make a significant impact in relieving the growing supply pressure.
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In case you didn’t hear, SAIC is planning to sell its headquarter property in Tysons to Meridian Group of Bethesda. It was a likely scenario considering SAIC has been pursuing rezoning of their property based on the new Comprehensive Plan, yet has no experience as being a property management company or construction firm. The move also follows the company’s split into government and private sector services and the forming of the new company Leidos. (Washington Post)
SAIC’s former property will ultimately contain 11 new high-rises as well as its existing 3 buildings which will be refurbished to include additional retail space. The new buildings range from 200′ to a single focal tower which will soar 435′ at 30-floors, making it the tallest building in Northern Virginia.
Urbanism Concept of the Day
If you are a civil engineer, the following post by a fellow colleague on Strong Towns about the transportation design method today in the US will ring true. Too much of our analysis of “transportation solutions” is created out of what a manual says is the correct answer, instead of reviewing as a return cycle what decision “A” in transportation causes in Land Use policy, causes as induced traffic and hindrance to local transportation elements such as pedestrians and cyclists. We as engineers are creating highway scale towns in order to attain what someone who likely was not even a transportation engineer is telling us is the right solution and in order to avoid future litigation from the countless accidents that happen on highways no matter the design standards used.
Empirical evidence is far better than the California and AASHTO design guidelines. Over the past 60 years we have seen that more lanes, wider lanes, and higher speeds only deteriorate traffic and only cause more fatalities on roads not less.