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Tysons Corner Is the New Downtown, Developers Say

Commercial developers showcased plans for new "live, work, play" communities in Tysons Corner.

 

When the first phase of the Silver Line Metro is up and running, the four new stations in Tysons Corner will become mini urban centers, a panel of developers explained to an auditorium of more than 100 at the Gannett headquarters in McLean on Wednesday morning.

The panel discussion was part of a networking event hosted by the Tysons Corner Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Slide after slide of glossy architectural renderings flashed on a big screen as the developers showcased pictures of new office buildings, new hotels, new condominums and new retail spaces that will start popping up around each of the new metro stations as soon as 2014. In total, tens of millions of square feets in new developed space are on the horizon.

But new buildings aren't the whole story. Tysons Corner Center will get a new entrance complete with an outdoor community center, suitable for farmers markets in summertime. Two new athletic fields will be installed along Westpark Drive. A new mixed used development near the Tysons Corner Central Metro station along Route 7 will potentially house 10-story outdoor video art wall.

Aaron Georgelas, a partner in the Georgelas Group, the firm developing a parcel adjacent to the Tysons West metro station, said the plans envision a community where metro riders can walk from station to store (or hotel, or apartment, or grocery) without needing an umbrella on a rainy day.

"We want people to feel like when they’ve arrived here they’ve arrived at the center of it all," Georgelas said.

Gerald Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, said Tysons Corner already represents the new epicenter of the Metro region.

In 1980, downtown Washington represented the geographic center of the region's economic drivers. In 2012, Tysons Corner is the new center, Gordon said.

"Fairfax county is now the downtown….and the heart of that is Tysons," Gordon said. "Tysons’s time has come."

Related Topics: Fairfax County, Tysons Corner, Tysons Corner new development, four towns of Tysons, and silver line metro

Kay G

4:23 pm on Friday, October 19, 2012

And WHERE is the discussion about the lack of roads and the grid lock this "tens of millions of square feet in new developed space" will create??? Because we are ALWAYS WAY BEHIND on surface transportation infrastructure! I, for one, cannot wait to depart Fairfax County. Our quality of life around the Tyson's area has totally tanked.

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John Strother

4:23 pm on Friday, October 19, 2012

Hardly anyone lives close to where they work. It seems that they want snow days off. I really doubt this new down town will be anything more than many regions of Washington DC in a few years. Over built and run down. No matter if you put lipstick on a pig, it still is only a pig.

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Doug Colvard

11:36 am on Saturday, November 17, 2012

One of your articles quotes a member of the Tysons businesss community as saying that "we will reap the benefits [of Metro coming to Tysons]." Truer word were never spoken. At everyone else's expense.

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