From the 15th-floor condo where she has lived for nearly four decades, Amy Tozzi can see the future of Tysons Corner, the Washington suburb local signs now tout as “Tysons — America’s next great city.”
The building boom viewed from Tozzi’s balcony coincides with the opening two years ago of the first segment of Metro’s Silver Line, which included five stations, four in Tysons — Spring Hill, Greensboro, Tysons and McLean. And it is only the beginning of Fairfax County’s 40-year plan to transform the traffic-clogged suburb of sterile office parks into an urban hub where tens of thousands more people will work and live while getting around on foot, bike and public transit.
But Tozzi and some of her neighbors near the McLean Metro station say county officials and developers seem so focused on Tysons’s future that they’re giving short shrift to the people already there. Six new office and apartment towers have opened in the two years since the Silver Line began service, bringing significantly more traffic, some residents say, while massive construction projects have narrowed roads and blocked sidewalks.
“I just want to protect our residential lifestyle,” said Tozzi, 77, a retired CIA employee who is pushing county officials to require more road improvements before buildings go up.
Developers, Tozzi said, “can’t just come in riding roughshod. . . . We’re accepting that there’s going to be a new way of life. We just don’t want to be overwhelmed by it.”
Pindar Van Arman, 42, a board member for The Colonies condo complex of about 1,000 residents, said he is excited to live within walking distance of the McLean Metro station. But he said many of the people who have moved into the new office and apartment towers continue to drive. The additional traffic, he said, is especially hard on his older neighbors, who cannot walk to Metro or who drive because Metro does not go to their doctor’s offices or grocery store.
When he voices concerns, Van Arman said, county officials tell him street improvements are coming. Meanwhile, he said, his daily commute as a software engineer is 10 minutes longer — nearly an extra hour every week — than it was just a few years ago. And residents continue to wait for an elevated walkway across the Capital Beltway that would allow them to walk to Tysons Corner Center for shopping and dining.
“Our concern is these shiny new communities are getting all the attention while communities like ours are being told, ‘Don’t worry, things will get better,’ ” Van Arman said. “We can’t stop development, but it seems like the decisions are all being made for people who don’t live here. . . . How about some love for the people who live here and are dealing with these growing pains?”
Michael Caplin, president of Tysons Partnership, a group of business, civic and government leaders, called Tysons the largest redevelopment project in the country. He said he can appreciate that a great deal of change could be “unnerving” to longtime residents.
Even so, he said, developers are bringing residents public plazas, green space and sports fields that they are required to build or contribute to. The new buildings also are bringing more stores and restaurants that are reachable via walking or Metro.
“If people feel like there’s a lot going on, it’s because there is,” Caplin said. “But there’s a deep, deep commitment to quality of life. We’re building a modern city. It’s an epic endeavor. . . . There’s a lot of construction going on, but I’d challenge the notion that it’s affecting the quality of life.”
This fall, Caplin said, the county is scheduled to begin building the Jones Branch Connector, which will carry traffic around the business district as part of a growing street grid. He said companies and hotels also are working to curb traffic by coordinating and expanding their private shuttle van networks by the end of the year.
In the last two years, Tysons has gotten a new high-rise hotel, two office towers and three apartment buildings. Three more high-rises — two apartment towers and an office building — are expected to open this summer, when construction is set to begin on three more apartment towers. About 130 buildings have received initial zoning approval, but they are in different stages of planning, a county official said.
The county’s Tysons growth plan covers about 2,000 acres. By 2050, it aims to double the number of jobs in the area from about 105,000 to 200,000 while increasing the number of residents five-fold, from about 19,000 now to 100,000. Most of the growth will happen within a half-mile of Metro stations.
As in many U.S. suburbs, local officials are seeking to accommodate population growth while increasing their tax base. Many suburbs also are working to attract millennials and hold on to empty-nest baby boomers — two outsize groups that are seeking more urban, walkable lifestyles.
Tozzi and others say the county should not allow so much building until the roads can better handle the new workers and residents streaming into the area. On a recent Wednesday at 10:15 a.m., traffic leaving the Beltway’s outer loop at McLean had backed up onto the exit ramp. The stop-and-go queue eventually reached Route 123, which had bogged down amid orange construction signs saying “Right lane closed ahead.”
Tozzi said the county’s plan for developers to help create a downtown-like street grid to help motorists and pedestrians better get around will not provide enough relief. That’s because developers often are only required to build new roads within their developments piecemeal as buildings go up. That, Tozzi said, can leave big chunks of the grid as mere dotted lines on planning maps for years until a property owner is ready to redevelop. Meanwhile, new traffic continues to funnel toward the relatively few existing roads.
“Normally, when you put in development, first you put in roads and then sewer lines and other infrastructure,” Tozzi said. “This is all backwards. We’re all here, and the development is coming before any new infrastructure.”
Fairfax officials say retrofitting a densely developed suburb is far more difficult than expanding one in a cornfield, the way suburbs took root decades ago.
Tracy Strunk, the Tysons coordinator for the county’s Office of Community Revitalization, said one of the top resident complaints that county officials are working to address — construction workers blocking or closing sidewalks — is relatively new for the car-centric suburb. County plans call for new buildings to be closer to sidewalks to foster a vibrant city streetscape rather than the series of vast parking lots now lining roads.
“Fairfax County has dealt with suburban development for a very long time, and we’ve done that well,” Strunk said. “Our regulations all deal with that. . . . If we still had cow pastures to build on, no one would be put out by it. Now, people are driving next to it or walking on it.”
She said the area will be able to absorb thousands of new residents and workers without traffic getting worse, because travel patterns will change over time as more Tysons commuters move to areas where they can take Metro to their jobs. Moreover, she said, requirements in the growth plan — such as adding sidewalks, focusing new development around Metro stations and allowing fewer parking spaces at new office buildings — will encourage and allow people to walk and use transit.
And what about the new people who will continue to drive? Strunk said the traffic analyses required as part of zoning proposals ensure that developers build new roads or widen existing ones to accommodate the additional motorists that their projects are expected to bring. It’s not financially feasible, she said, for developers to pay millions to build or widen streets before they open their buildings. But as more buildings go up and the street network expands, she said, motorists will have more alternatives so that they will not swamp existing roads.
“As buildings become occupied, there will be the traffic network necessary to support each building,” Strunk said.
Developers say the transformation will take years, and the building booms will come in waves based on how quickly — or not — new buildings fill up.
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon Bulova (D) said that she has heard mostly from residents thrilled about their easier access to Metro and the way Tysons is developing a “residential life,” complete with public concerts and the Cirque du Soleil coming this summer.
“I’m pleased with the way it’s evolving, and we’re just a couple years into the development of Tysons,” Bulova said. “But this is an evolution. There’s the existing, and then there’s the new. It requires some artfulness and vigilance to make sure we’re blending the two.”
