Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
Posted on 09/18/2010 1:18:33 PM PDT by Willie Green
Transit-oriented project at New Carrollton could become national model
New Carrollton is slated to become Metro’s first large-scale transit-oriented development in Prince George’s County.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is looking for development teams to partner on a 5.5 million-square-foot project on 39 acres near the New Carrollton Metrorail, Amtrak and MARC stations.
It’s a significant development for Prince George’s County, where transit-oriented development at the county’s 15 Metro stations has lagged behind other jurisdictions in the region.
And the solicitation marks a change in approach for Metro’s joint development under its new director of real estate, Steve Goldin. The agency could allow for reduced fixed payments from developers at the early stages, a model Goldin hopes could show Metro’s strength as a development partner and could be applied to transit-oriented development nationwide.
With a joint development project at Hyattsville stalled due to the poor economy and one of Metro’s partner projects near the Greenbelt station mired in litigation, the agency has high hopes for New Carrollton.
“I’m anticipating not just all the major players in this market to respond to it, but also major players nationally,” Goldin said. “We are already getting indications from them.” He declined to name any specific companies.
Proposals will be required to meet the General Services Administration’s standards for federal buildings as a way to lure federal tenants and private sector companies that tend to follow the feds. The site, part of which is owned by the state, is adjacent to the massive Internal Revenue Service building at New Carrollton.
Instead of issuing a request for proposals, Metro is issuing a request for qualifications to gauge developer interest and ability to complete the project. Metro will hold a mandatory pre-bid meeting Oct. 5 with responses due Nov. 5. The authority will then work with the partner to plan the project: a mix of uses including up to 2.5 million square feet of office or other commercial space and 3,000 residential units.
Metro also will change the way it funds planning and design. The Maryland Department of Transportation will provide $350,000 and the selected developer will front $650,000 that will be refunded after the project breaks ground. In the past, Metro has provided only a small amount of seed money for planning and design; developers were responsible for funding the rest out of pocket with no hope of getting any back.
“I always talk about Prince George’s County because that’s where the big parcels of land are,” said Goldin, who took the reins of the authority’s joint development efforts a year ago with the goal of rehabilitating and accelerating planning and development.
Goldin said the solicitation could serve as a test of a joint-development style that — if successful — could be applied by the Federal Transit Administration to joint developments involving transit agencies nationally.
What Goldin is calling a “synthetic joint venture” would involve Metro receiving reduced fixed-price payments, especially in the early stages, with the opportunity for a greater payoff for developers and Metro. Instead of a developer paying a set ground lease, the partners would establish a reduced fixed ground rent in exchange for a higher overall return from the project’s performance. The agency could eventually introduce lease rates that fluctuate depending on market conditions or issues with construction delays.
“It’s a terrific opportunity for the county to create a true mixed-use center at a multimodal transportation location,” said Kwasi Holman, CEO of the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corp. “This is really good news for the county.”
Gov. Martin O’Malley announced in June a series of efforts aimed at bolstering development near the state’s MARC and Metrorail stations. One offered additional planning money for projects and infrastructure improvements and the other designated priority stations. The New Carrollton, Naylor Road, Branch Avenue and Laurel MARC stations — all in Prince George’s — made the priority list.
Prince George's County made strides this summer in snagging the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development as a future tenant. The state hopes to finish the bidding process for the new facility by the end of the year.
New Carrollton is a city located in central Prince George's County, Maryland, in the United States.[1] As of the 2000 census, population was 12,589.
New Carrollton is 12.11 miles from central Washington, DC.
The New Carrollton Amtrak station is the first north of Washington Union Station on the Northeast Corridor. It is also served by the Penn Line of the MARC commuter rail service. The adjacent New Carrollton station of the Washington Metro is the eastern terminus of the Orange Line.
You don’t want to work anywhere near New Carrollton. Trust me.
...good luck on getting that done...Prince George’s Co has the highest crime rate of any county in Maryland....it also has the highest forclosure rate among home owners...the county has been going black for years.
Definitely an area to not go into anymore.
Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
You're absolutely correct. I grew up in Landover during the 1970's. New Carollton when it was first built used to be a nice area -- like most of PG County at that time. Not any more. It's totally ruined and unsafe -- like most of PG county is today.
Yep. I lived in Camp Springs during the 1970’s, when Landover Mall was the best shopping center in the county. Now it’s a mouldering hulk.
This is not an area I woiuld allow anyone to enter unescorted. When we have female friends going to the train station there. I often go with them to provide protection.
When we moved to PG County 26 years ago it was a partly rural and fairly charming place. Now it is a urban sewer and our plans to depart are unfolding nicely.
Incidentally, there is no such thing as a GOP presence here it figures as this is Michael Steele’s home turf) and my polling precinct went for The Won more than 90%. There has been no elected GOP official in memory. Welfare cronies, poverty pimps, and race hustlers abound.
And Stenchy Whoreyer is our congressman. Sigh.
All my life I’ve lived in Lanham, which is right next to New Carrollton. Which was solidly white middle-class when first built in the 1960s. It’s progressively slipped into predominantly Black, lower, middle class, Hispanic and Middle Eastern over close to a half century and shows absolutely no sign of revitalization.
The idea of improving or enlarging the New Carrollton Metro station is absolutely ludicrous. There’s never been parking for those who use Merto to get to and from DC and Arlington. Let alone those who might use Amtrak to travel to all points north and south. Don’t even bet me started on the MARC Lines!
The tracks are ancient. The MetroRail cars, slightly less old and the fare system was based on cheap, second hand Taiwanese technology that was far below par forty years ago.
Sounds a lot like Maryland’s version of Boston’s notorious ‘Big Dig’ and works like it too!
Jack.
Landover Mall is even less of a mouldering hulk these days.
It has been completely torn down and replaced with a
parking lot for FED EX field down the road.
I remember Landover Mall opening up, and went to it a few times...very whizzy back then.
I was saddened to read this link, but given where Prince George's County is these days, I am not surprised.
At one of the links there were some sad pictures, but interesting to read about the demise. Funny, knowing the politically correct, liberal-socialist suck off the government teat attitude that prevails there, I read this article as a harbinger:
Arthur Turner, chairman of the Prince George’s Chamber of Commerce’s economic development committee, has criticized owner Lerner Enterprises of North Bethesda for its failure to revitalize the mall. ‘‘Landover Mall has been a black eye on the county, because of the deterioration that Lerner allowed to happen at the mall,” Turner said. ‘‘While there’s been an effort to revitalize Landover Mall, the biggest obstacle has been the owner, and we have continued to work around them.”
This is the guy:
Anywhere liberals take office, be it Detroit, Washington, New Jersey, New York or Los Angeles, they run it into the ground because they expect business and industry to accept abuse, taxation and anti-business legislation without a peep, they the become indignant when those industries and corporations decide the privilege of existing merely to provide jobs for people who vote to tighten the noose on them is not worth going out of business over, so they leave.
When Landover Mall was going downhill, I don't doubt for a second that there were Obama-style liberals out there protesting that they were being denied a 'living wage' from the evil corporations that only wanted to make a profit.
He’s a fool blaming anything other than the community. Since the media will never challenge him on it, areas die.
Yep. Thomas Sowell discusses this in his books, how black communities cry racism when businesses refuse to expand to inner city areas, but the real reason they won’t is that it simply doesn’t make business sense.
The community organizers think Safeway should open a store in Oakland to serve the community and provide jobs.
Safeway isn’t the least bit interested in that, because their job is to make money, and they can’t do it when they have to pay increased costs for security, building maintenance, higher rates of shop lifting and so on.
Reality sucks...for those who think it doesn’t apply to them.
Good luck to them.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Lots of reality in this thread. From a theoretical perspective the concept makes sense, but those of us from the area know that we are talking about a site that combines the elements of PG County, Metro, Amtrak, MARC, and real estate developers who are praying that somehow this will be different. Good luck with that!
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