North Bethesda/White Flint becoming the next TYSON CORNER (Silver Spring: condos, hotels)

[$mk8795]

Tysons have more options than White Flint and their little shopping mall demolishing is notgoing to help White Flint compete with Tysons Corner.

Originally Posted by adelphi_sky

Tysons, for what it is, is FUBAR. And I'm not sure the metro will help. It is absolutely impossible to walk around in that place. And other than the twin mall area, it is a hodge podge of strip centers. I had training there once and had to walk to the mall to get some food. Absolutely horrid for pedestrians.

White Flint, though also a bunch of strip centers excluding the mall, has a lot more potential for pedestrians. Rt. 355 is one straight road - a rather large one. Once could easily build walkable clusters on either side of it.

Tysons is hard to describe and besides the shopping, I'm not sure who would want to live there.

[$mk8795]

Most people don't care about "walkable places" than they do about convenience to Office Buildings, Upscale Retail Shopping Malls, and Hotels...

Originally Posted by Mister Zen

It will be better than Tysons Corner because Tysons Corner is a car-centric mess. Even with adding the metro.. the layout of the area is designed more for cars than people and that'll be hard to change.

At least White Flint can be made kind of walkable. But they need to add a second entrance to the metro there. They have the space!

[$mk8795]

However at the end of the day Tysons comes out better than White Flint based in Employment and Entertainment.

Originally Posted by Steelers10

Tyson's is the epitome of 1980s developmental excess. I don't think any developer/municipality combo will ever think to allocate that level of resources and land area to a project again. I would think White Flint's footprint is too small to try and replicate a Tyson's which I think is why it had been more of a "vertical" mall than Tyson's Corner Center (Tyson's I for us older folks) in the first place. Certainly similarities can exist; I'm always amazed how much of the 1970s cheese around Tyson's has been redeveloped and 355 is on that same path. However, the largesse of Tyson's is a sunk cost and the White Flint area can now benefit from smarter planning and incorporate more mixed-use/residential/"lifestyle" land use than a Tyson's can retroactively.

[$mk8795]

Originally Posted by Mister Zen

Building up makes more sense than building out. New York City learn this over 100 years ago. Amazing how the DC area somehow didn't get the memo.

With that said that would be comparison between DC and NYC.

[$mk8795]

And once again at the end of the day Tysons Corner still comes out better than White Flint due to Large Employers and Entertainment...

Originally Posted by kcmo

I hope not. Tyson's is a mess. It's Texas type sprawl and metro rail won't fix it.

Give me Silver Spring or Bethesda any day. I hope those areas continue to get more dense. I think Silver Spring will really take off when the purple line opens up through there along with the transit center. That will be the most transit friendly place in the region outside of parts of central DC.

[$mk8795]

The drawback is that Tysons have more Professional Jobs that will continue to draw Maryland tax payers to Virginia which cintinues to drain Business and Economic Growth away from Maryland.

Originally Posted by wildcat3

White Flint is developing towards residential, retail and restaurants. JBG recently announced that they are converting one of their planned White Flint office buildings to retail. Meanwhile, Capital One is planning to build the tallest office building in the metro DC area in Tysons Corner. I'd love to see at least one major Fortune 500 company relocate to White Flint since that would bring good jobs to the area.

Both are developing high rise apartments and both are major retail centers. The difference I see is that there won't be major corporations based in White Flint.

Having all those jobs has a drawback: Tysons has the worst traffic in the DC area during the week. It will be interesting to see how the traffic situation develops once the Silver Line opens.

Personally, I prefer White Flint. I like what I see coming with Pike & Rose. I think it will have more of a human scale.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by $mk8795

And once again at the end of the day Tysons Corner still comes out better than White Flint due to Large Employers and Entertainment...

And so does Texas. Their office park sprawl is pulling in jobs from all over the country. But that doesn't mean it's good urban planning or that people really "want" to live there. People follow jobs.

They are trying to make things more walkable and dense out there, but I'm not sure there is a lot that can really be done other than having a few islands of mixed use development here and there.

[superseiyan]

Originally Posted by kcmo

And so does Texas. Their office park sprawl is pulling in jobs from all over the country. But that doesn't mean it's good urban planning or that people really "want" to live there. People follow jobs.

They are trying to make things more walkable and dense out there, but I'm not sure there is a lot that can really be done other than having a few islands of mixed use development here and there.

I never understand this. As you say, often people don't want to live somewhere but do. Unless their location is legally restricted (immigration, education, criminal probation, etc) why does anyone have to live anywhere that they don't "really want"?

And it's the opposite for those that complain about expensive real estate. Again, unless their location is restricted (in DC for example, many international workers have to be in the DC area or if you're going to school in a DC area school, you need to be here)....they don't have to pay $1500 a month for a studio.

Sometimes folks underestimate how much control over their situation they have and just go with the flow.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by superseiyan

I never understand this. As you say, often people don't want to live somewhere but do. Unless their location is legally restricted (immigration, education, criminal probation, etc) why does anyone have to live anywhere that they don't "really want"?

And it's the opposite for those that complain about expensive real estate. Again, unless their location is restricted (in DC for example, many international workers have to be in the DC area or if you're going to school in a DC area school, you need to be here)....they don't have to pay $1500 a month for a studio.

Sometimes folks underestimate how much control over their situation they have and just go with the flow.

Commute times, cost of living etc. often come into play and supersede quality of life or personal preferences.

I know that there are a lot of people that do the daily rat race of living in a far flung subdivision and grind through suburban traffic to some office park etc. They don’t necessarily like it, but it’s the easy and affordable thing to do.

Jobs are going to places like NoVA where land is cheaper, cities and counties are friendly to developers that want to build sprawling low density office parks and the rooftops and residents follow.

I really like the DC area, but this wouldn’t be my first choice of where to live. Personally, I want to live in Denver, Colorado. But the low pay and lack of jobs in my field have kept me away. In a city like Denver, it’s much easier to work some suburban office park and live in the urban core of Denver if needed. In DC, that’s not the case due to very expensive COL in more urban areas here and long commute times.

Even so, I agree with this:

Sometimes folks underestimate how much control over their situation they have and just go with the flow

[superseiyan]

Originally Posted by kcmo

I really like the DC area, but this wouldn’t be my first choice of where to live. Personally, I want to live in Denver, Colorado. But the low pay and lack of jobs in my field have kept me away. In a city like Denver, it’s much easier to work some suburban office park and live in the urban core of Denver if needed. In DC, that’s not the case due to very expensive COL in more urban areas here and long commute times.

Fascinating, I did not know that. For many cities it's generally a reverse commute for the middle class? Is it DC or Denver that's the anomaly or it's about 50-50 as far as the big cities nationwide?