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What are the similarities and differences between the Clarendon and Balstrom areas, including some of the advantages / disadvantages of living in each area. Thanks.
Assuming you mean Ballston, the two are parts of a strip of modern, high-density, smart-growth type development that follows the Metro Orange Line through the North Arlington stations at Court House, Clarendon, Virginia Square, and Ballston. There are differences between the areas in that corridor, but those would pale as against the differences that become apparent once you leave it...
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Agreed, assuming you're talking about Ballston. They're usually considered one and the same "area". You could walk between them or hop the subway for a couple stops. It's all as described above, which is different from any other part of DC or most other cities for that matter.
The whole area is very young professional and white, but has a decent nightlife if you're in that kind of suburban-urban scene. I think of it as city living for people who don't really want the grit and diversity of city living but don't want the boring suburbs either. It's a nice mix for that market. Ballston is a little further out, maybe a little less "hip" than Clarendon, but the differences are miniscule.
You also have more conventional single houses within blocks of the dense urban corridor that has sprung up along the subway line. It's a pioneer of smart growth, and Arlington should be honored for such visionary foresight of turning used car lots into high rise mixed-use apartments.
It's a pioneer of smart growth, and Arlington should be honored for such visionary foresight of turning used car lots into high rise mixed-use apartments.
Yeah, but I still miss the shack of a pinball place that used to be on the west side of the bus lot. I don't know how many buses I ended up missing just because I had a hot ball going. Those were the days...
Yeah, but I still miss the shack of a pinball place that used to be on the west side of the bus lot. I don't know how many buses I ended up missing just because I had a hot ball going. Those were the days...
Which goes to the heart of my question. I'm a city planner and do appreciate what has been accomplished in this area, but when the urban villages start to look the same and when former businesses with a unique history and charm are replaced by the bix box retailers or chain restaurants, the areas can become rather sterile.
I'm planning on moving into the are in the next few months. Would I be wrong in assuming that much of the corridor has already transition into the newer urban villages? Is there a portion of the corridor that has yet to transition, where its still more of a traditional residential - commercial corridor?
Which goes to the heart of my question. I'm a city planner and do appreciate what has been accomplished in this area, but when the urban villages start to look the same and when former businesses with a unique history and charm are replaced by the bix box retailers or chain restaurants, the areas can become rather sterile.
Well, pinball place or no, I would not seek to reverse what has happened in Ballston the past 25 years or so. The Ballston Metro station is the last underground station on the Orange Line, and for almost seven years after it opened, it was the line's western terminus. There was almost literally nothing there aside from the bus lot that everyone wishing to go further out into Falls Church, McLean, Vienna and beyond had to use in order to continue their journey. The IHOP on the east side, an Asian market (Hidden Garden, Secret Garden...something like that) to the north, and the pinball place in a dusty, somewhat ramshackle, single-story house to the west. You walked over 4x8-foot sheets of plywood to get to the house, but as there was often a 20-to-30 minute wait for the bus, a few games of pinball (or just one if you were having a good night) was a nice way to pass that time away. Fast-forward a quarter-century, and the area has become just what Metro and its developers had said it would, though not many believed it would ever happen at the time. The sterile, dead, wasteland era was in the days of the pinball place. Today, it's a vibrant and thriving residential and commercial community.
In a perhaps interesting side-story, the name Ballston was almost lost from the geographic lexicon. In the 1950's, the at the time impressive Parkington Shopping Center (now the site of Ballston Common Mall) had been built, and so significant was its influence that the area became almost universally known as Parkington. Metro's originally planned name for the Ballston station was simply "Glebe Road", but they needed to acquire land owned by the local volunteer fire department which refused to sell unless the name was changed to Ballston, in part because the bus lot atop the station was exactly where the Ballston trolley station had once stood. The change was made, and so the name not only lives on, but lives on in prominence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sandstorrm
I'm planning on moving into the are in the next few months. Would I be wrong in assuming that much of the corridor has already transition into the newer urban villages? Is there a portion of the corridor that has yet to transition, where its still more of a traditional residential - commercial corridor?
I can't visualize every linear foot of it from memory, but you would not be wrong in assuming that the conversion is essentially complete through the length of the corridor from Court House west to Ballston. The corridor is now into getting fatter moreso than longer. If you wanted to watch how something in its earlier stages develops, Columbia Heights might be the place. There, about 550,000 square feet of upscale, big-box retail (DC USA) and a variety of upscale condos and apartments have been plopped right on top of a Metro station in the middle of a "neighborhood in transition" in NW DC. Quite the different start point from what was the case in Ballston. It will be interesting to see if it will follow along the same sort of path.
Which goes to the heart of my question. I'm a city planner and do appreciate what has been accomplished in this area, but when the urban villages start to look the same and when former businesses with a unique history and charm are replaced by the bix box retailers or chain restaurants, the areas can become rather sterile.
I'm planning on moving into the are in the next few months. Would I be wrong in assuming that much of the corridor has already transition into the newer urban villages? Is there a portion of the corridor that has yet to transition, where its still more of a traditional residential - commercial corridor?
This isn't necessarily a typical "urban village" where a developer builds a bunch of faux streets with faux gas lanterns and faux second stories through what is essentially a commercial mall. It's also not like the disaster that is Crystal City, where you half expect Rosie the Jetson's robot to emerge from those futuristic tunnels that lack all human quality except for a single stretch of old bars that are so out of place.
There is an organic quality to the Orange Line corridor's transition. There's still little diners and divey bars that are local favorites interspersed with the high rises. There's still old tree lined residential neighborhoods. There's always a lot of Latinos in Ballston, too. I don't know if they live there, but they are always around.
Yes, it's more sterile than, for example, the redevelopment of U Street or 14th Street inside the city. Many of the high rises look similar to one another. But, it serves an important lifestyle market.
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