Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood issues.
I know that certain, wonderfully stubborn organizations continue to press for an underground tunnel through Tyson’s Corner. It’s a very sensible thing to pursue, and I don’t blame them at all. Still, there are advantages to running your rail above ground, if circumstances permit it. The view, for one thing. Simply by riding the Red Line east three stops out of Union Station, you can see the future of conflict over District development. It’s in that stretch of land from just north of the Capitol out to the edge of Northeast D.C. that the growing city most visibly struggles to succeed.
In the part of the city they call NoMa, it’s a rare block without a new office building, or a construction crew, or a sign announcing the imminent arrival of one. The placement of an infill Metro station at the intersection of Florida and New York Avenues was remarkably foresighted, as the reduction of vacant lots makes obvious, but across the tracks some of the city’s most character-filled structures loom underused and under threat. While the Washington Coliseum finds itself safe from the wrecking ball for the time being, the shopkeepers of the Florida Avenue markets keep a wary eye on development plans for their land. While legislators declare their intention to make room in new projects for old businesses, it seems far more likely that old structures will be erased whenever possible, and that rents will rise above a level affordable for most independent businesses.
Head north to Rhode Island Avenue, and you find yourself looking down upon rows of townhomes and highrise apartment buildings, along with lovely old vacant warehouses with limitless potential. But the station itself has small, suburban style shopping centers on either side, the result of a deliberate and shortsighted strategy by elements of the D.C. government. Yes, the businesses in those shopping centers do well, and customers seem happy to have them. The question, however, is one of opportunity cost. How craven or blind must someone be to miss the value of such land, close to downtown and abutting a Metro station, that they’d settle for one story buildings and acres of parking?
Picture taken by IntangibleArts.
