Coming in the next decade: National Landing adds buses, trains, sidewalks, streets

By Patricia Sullivan,

National Landing, the renamed neighborhood of Crystal City-Pentagon City-Potomac Yards in Arlington and Alexandria, will become the country’s most connected urban center sometime in the next decade, its business boosters say.

Eight major transportation projects are underway in the area, with the aim of turning what is often seen as a busy pass-through into a truly urban neighborhood where residents, office workers and visitors have easy access to local and regional amenities as well as long-distance travel.

The projects will expand heavy rail services such as Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express; add four new miles of protected bike lanes; turn a busy elevated highway into an urban boulevard that emphasizes safety and walkability; add additional Metro entrances; extend dedicated bus lanes; widen sidewalks and create new trailheads; and construct a pedestrian bridge over the George Washington Memorial Parkway between Crystal City and Reagan National Airport.

“The collective impact of the projects are truly transformative,” said Tracy Sayegh Gabriel, president and executive director of the National Landing Business Improvement District, which published a report touting $4 billion in both public and private investments in National Landing. “This is a story of innovation, equity, sustainability and competitive advantage.”

The projects are in the planning, design or construction stages, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on travel patterns and the lives of restaurant, office and hospitality workers. They came together because of the arrival of Amazon’s second headquarters in Arlington, which was announced two years ago. Many of the projects had been in the discussion or planning stages earlier than that, but the Amazon decision accelerated the plans.

(Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

“Access to good-quality, multimodal transit options was one of the key drivers in Amazon’s decision to locate in Arlington,” Brian Huseman, the retail behemoth’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement. “The additional investments in transportation infrastructure from the County and the Commonwealth will make this one of the most connected and innovative jurisdictions — benefitting the community at large.”

JBG Smith, the developer of Amazon’s building projects in the neighborhood and the majority property owner in Crystal City, announced last month that it has finished construction on a ­14-story tower at 1770 Crystal Dr. that is leased to Amazon.

Amazon now leases more than 850,000 square feet of space in National Landing, the Arlington Economic Development agency said.

More than 26,000 people already live in the National Landing area, with more housing in the pipeline. Office space takes up 12 million square feet. There are more than 450 retail stores and restaurants and 5,500 hotel rooms. And it’s likely to get even busier.

Amazon has hired more than 1,000 employees of the 25,000 it expects to eventually work at its new headquarters. Its twin 22-story buildings, the first of two sites underway in Arlington, are rising from what used to be empty warehouses along South Eads Street. JBG Smith announced on Dec. 21 that it bought the former Americana Hotel directly across the street, which it plans to replace with a 500,000-square-foot multifamily development.

The county and neighboring Alexandria, expecting significant economic benefits from Amazon’s arrival, have welcomed the company, even to the extent of sharing what questions elected officials planned to ask at public hearings.

The transportation projects will be financed by $270 million of state and federal money, as well as tax increment financing in which future local development will pay the costs for construction. In selling the Amazon project to the community, local governments have emphasized these long-term capital investments will benefit all users, not just Amazon and related businesses.

Labor organizations and groups that advocate for low-income workers have resisted Amazon’s expansion in Arlington, protesting pay and working conditions in its warehouses elsewhere in the nation and accusing Amazon of tolerating labor abuses, which the company denies.

National Airport lies just one-third of a mile from Crystal Drive, the main retail street of Crystal City. Construction of a pedestrian bridge over the GW Parkway will make this urban neighborhood walkable to or from the airport, the only place in the United States where this is possible, Gabriel said. The airport is working on a $1 billion project to modernize and improve access and connections.

The neighborhood is already well connected. It has three Metrorail stations, five Arlington Transit bus routes, nine WMATA bus routes, three commuter bus routes, two trailheads, a bus rapid-transit route that connects to Alexandria and spots of active sidewalks. Only one-third of National Landing residents drive alone to work, an Arlington County survey says, as compared with 76 percent of commuters nationally.

Still, streets in the area were often jammed for commuters before the pandemic reduced traffic volumes.

Redevelopment on this scale is a complex prospect, with agencies from the county to the Virginia Department of Transportation to the National Park Service having a say in how highways are reconfigured and whether a bridge should be built.

Business groups want a “through-running” commuter train system, where VRE riders from Spotsylvania can have a one-seat trip through Maryland Area Regional Commuter Train Service and Amtrak up and down the East Coast. The first step is the addition of a new Long Bridge over the Potomac to add rail lines, a project now in the design stage.

Gabriel said her BID’s effort is to “excite” employers, government agencies and local residents about what’s coming.

“We’re already pushing against the grain by investing in transportation in a time of waning ridership,” she said. “But transportation investments of this scale are what really builds resilience and economic recovery.”

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