DC: How Will Mass Transit Change Tysons Corner?
The famous edge city of Tysons Corner, Va., long a hub for luxury retailers and corporate HQ locations, is changing quickly. The major driver: the opening of four new Metro mass transit stations in two weeks, which'll be transformative in the long term for Tysons, says JLL DC research head Scott Homa. (He's in the yellow tie, flanked by colleagues Jessica Schuett, Carl Caputo, Sara Hines, and Jacob Anderson.) But he says that while the stations may be the apple of developers' eyes, office tenants and residents might not be convinced to move to Tysons just yet. (Commuting can make skeptics of us all.)
Some tenants in the region may broaden their search areas to Tysons, Scott says, but "it's not likely going to all of a sudden create an outpouring of demand that didn't exist before." Both potential apartment residents and prospective office tenants will evaluate the addition of the Metro in Tysons as part of the greater Northern Virginia and DC markets, Scott says. So having modest expectations in terms of absorption is how he's welcoming the new train service. A bigger problem, he says, might be making the car-centric Tysons (notorious for having some of the area's worst traffic) a more walkable place, something neighborhood stakeholders are pushing for.
