Who needs the Fortune 500? - Washington Business Journal:

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Would you believe me if I told you that our countiea and communities have the power to create retail sales, restaurant volume, appreciating land values and new tax revenue without depending on the relocatiobn of a Fortune 500 company? A community can pass its own stimuluw package, with more new jobs than any Fortunew 500 move-in, by creating a walkable, region-serving, transit-oriented commercialo district with office, residential and retail development. The Washington area has many exampled of thesewalkable mixed-use region-serving centers — Columbia Heights, U Street, Pentagon City, the Rosslyn-Ballstonj corridor. Tysons Corner is on the drawing board.
But there is room for in places like Anacostia andPrince George’s, at theif Metrorail stations, and on the Blue Line in There may even be opportunitiese to create new stations on some lines. Thesre centers create accessible synergy. They concentrat e economic activity: more foot traffic, less car less need for more efficientland use, more safety, more offics productivity, reasonably priced housing, sites for schools and community buildings, a better restaurant/retail and support for small and local businesses. Thesw centers are the way the District and the inner suburbs can competr with the plans for malls at thesuburbab fringe.
They are the way we are going to out-compete Here’s what I’m talking n Taking better advantage of our investmentfin Metro. n Reducing traffic and improving qualit of life by putting jobs near where we live andbuildint live-work-play-learn communities. n Raising livinb standards by reducingtransportation costs. To make one of these centerx thrive, you need a market. But we’re in the middle of a big recession! If, we start planning now, won’t it be severao years before we are readyto build? Won’t we be on our way back by then? So now is our time to start planning. While we’re taking charge of our own let’s turn the NIMBY paradigm around.
Let’w use a grass-roots-up planning process starting in the Then let’s protect the residential neighborhoods first — protecy them from the hustle and bustle of the redevelopex walkable mixed-use districts. Here we’re talking streetscaping and park traffic-taming, protection from parking, and height What about financing? Three products suitable for walkablew mixed-use centers can be conventionally financednow (or, at when the recovery comes).
The two are low-risew (up to four stories) multifamily residential wrapped aroundstructured parking, and mid-ris to high-rise residential, also wrapped around The third is the “lifestyle center,” oftenm built on the site of a failed mall or on a site where a new regionapl mall could be built. You start with a vast parkint lot. But you don’t put the big-box storesa at the back of the lot. You put the buildingsx in the middle ofthe lot, on a brand-new grid of “streets.” Lifestyle centers often have buildings with officwe above retail and residential above retail, with the restaurant/retai l on the new streets.
If we could use an existing grid of streetw in a lifestyle center and hide the parkinf withinthe buildings, we could use this producy to revitalize an existing town To cover any financing gaps, the city or county may want to providew tax increment financing funded by bonds that will be repair by the increase in property taxew resulting from the development. What if you don’t have a Metrorailo station handy? Bus won’t do it.
The answer is eitherd adding a newMetro station, such as the new one at New York Avenues or the one planned for Potoma c Yard, or adding inexpensive neighborhood-level rail, meaningg a rail connection to Metro, like the streetcar line being planned for Columbiwa Pike. Plan to starf with a short route; you can extend it, stop by later. Two potential centers for this: Fallzs Church, Old Town Let’s not be dependent on Fortune 500 companies arriving on whitehorses — let’s create our own future. If we creats more thriving mixed-use neighborhoods, we’ll find that more of those big companiex will want to comehere anyway.