Tysons housing permits are ahead of plan, but walkability lags behind

Even amidst region-wide lockdowns, new residents were moving into The Boro, a new development in Tysons near the Greensboro Metro Station with 667 apartments and condos so far. The Boro also features high-end retail including one of the nation’s largest Whole Foods and new office buildings. All of this sits atop a new grid of narrow streets. The immediate area is very pedestrian-friendly, and some of the new streets are even car-free.

The Boro is part of a years-long effort to redevelop the land surrounding the four Tysons Metro stations that opened in 2014. The new housing at the Boro is just a fraction of the new buildings that have been delivered and that are in the planning stages for the Tysons. The Boro — with safe, shaded streets and a healthy mix of housing, office, and retail development — is an example of the type of development that the Tysons planning documents call for.

The Tysons redevelopment plan established a goal of achieving a residential population of 100,000 by 2050. With an average household size of about two residents, that requires about 50,000 units. Fairfax policymakers emphasize that their plan for Tysons’ transformation is designed to take place over 40 years. But 10 years in, it makes sense to evaluate progress toward the plan’s objectives so far. In general, Tysons is not on track to meet transportation goals, but is in a position to exceed its goals for housing construction.

As of the latest Progress Report on Tysons, 12,991 homes were in Tysons—about 4,000 of them delivered since 2011. There were nearly an additional 1,000 units under construction, and about 30,000 more were either approved or under review. New housing construction has taken time to ramp up in response to the major upzoning; so far fewer than 1,000 units have been delivered per year, not on pace to reach housing for 100,000 residents by 2050.

However, in 2011, 2,390 housing units were approved and unbuilt in Tysons, a figure that increased to 14,713 in 2015, and to 24,514 in 2019. The increasing number of approved units provides evidence that an increasing rate of construction will follow. In the best of times, not all of the housing that receives permit approvals will be built, and the pandemic may present a headwind for construction in Tysons. Nonetheless, based on the approved permits, housing development will exceed the plan’s 2050 goals.

More construction may mean more affordability

There’s some evidence that construction in Tysons is contributing to improved affordability, as well. For example, the lowest-priced apartments at The Ascent, one of the earliest Tysons redevelopment projects near the Spring Hill Metro station, rented for $1,753 per month in 2018. Today, some studios at The Ascent rent for $1,679 per month. This compares to an average rent in Tysons of $2,326 with an average apartment size of 929 square feet.

Undoubtedly, the development of new housing in the suburban jurisdictions and edge cities of the Washington region has contributed to affordability here relative to other coastal regions with lots of high-paying jobs. In the region, 6% of households earning 50 to 80% of the area’s median income are severely cost-burdened, whereas this statistic is in the double digits in many coastal regions.

The Fairfax County Board adopted the comprehensive plan for redevelopment in Tysons in 2010, which was a very different time in urban development policy and politics than today. As house prices across the country were bottoming out, ongoing affordability challenges for renters in high-cost locations did not receive the attention it does today from most local policymakers. Talk was of housing oversupply, rather than a chronic undersupply of housing in high-income suburbs like Fairfax County.

Over the past decade, housing unaffordability as a problem for low-income households across the country as well as for middle-income households in high-cost coastal regions has gained prominence as an important policy concern in part due to the work of housing activists. Land use restrictions that limit the amount of housing that can be built, and that limit multifamily construction in particular, is increasingly recognized as a cause of affordability problems at the regional level.

Fairfax County has not always been receptive of multifamily infill construction. Longtime County Board of Supervisors member Audrey Moore built her career in Fairfax politics on an anti-growth-in-the-name-of-environmentalism platform. Her legacy includes many parks and other open spaces in Fairfax along with policies intended to slow housing construction and limit residential density. The Tysons plan along with other multifamily infill developments across Fairfax are a departure both from its own past and from other wealthy suburban jurisdictions that have tended to stand in the way of housing construction.

Does all this housing mean Tysons is more walkable?

Anyone who has been to Tysons knows it still presents many barriers to walkability. Arterial roads Route 7 and Route 123 cut through it with, in some places, a dozen lanes of traffic. I-495 cuts off McLean Metro Station from the development around the other three Tysons stations.

In order to create streets that are more appropriate for pedestrians, the plan established a goal for about 20 miles of new, narrow streets that would provide a safe, pleasant space for pedestrians and cyclists to travel (Map 7, page 49). So far, only about one mile has been completed. The Silver Line’s ridership numbers lag far behind the estimates in its final Environmental Impact Report (page 9).

In 2019, single occupancy vehicle trips into and out of Tysons had fallen 18% from their peak in 2017 but are still higher than they were in 2011 (page 27). Time will only tell how the coronavirus and the latest Silver Line summer shutdown will further impact ridership.

Perhaps most importantly for Tysons’ progress toward a place that invites pedestrianism, little progress has been made toward transforming Route 123 or Route 7 into the pleasant boulevards that the Comprehensive Plan calls for (page 50). In fact, portions of Route 123 and Route 7 have been widened (page 23) since the Tysons redevelopment plan was adopted.

In some cases, state policy has stood in the way of pedestrian improvements in Tysons. For example, the Fairfax County Department of Transportation has faced resistance from the Virginia Department of Transportation in efforts to reduce traffic lanes and add crosswalks at some intersections.

Further, the above-ground Metro stations are centered over major thoroughfares pedestrians can only access from skybridges. Some local policymakers fought for underground Metro in Tysons, but their proposal gave way to cost considerations and (political will) when the Silver Line was eventually approved. The Tysons comprehensive plan discourages skybridges, but the Metro stations are located on skybridges because that’s the only safe way to access them.

One of Tysons’ new housing developments, the Vita, opens onto an elevated plaza that connects to a large mall, Tysons Corner Center, and the Tysons Corner Metro via sky bridge. This makes it possible and safe for Vita residents to reach all of the mall’s destinations on foot, but it also means the building’s residents, perched above a large parking garage, are shut off from a pleasant walk anywhere else.

Housing on a grid

The 2010 Tysons plan’s most ambitious component is an effort to create a new grid of narrow streets to create safe and pleasant pedestrian routes between the area’s wide roads. But in order to facilitate building new streets in a built out area, the plan encourages large developments, of 20 acres or more, so that new projects will be large enough to contribute to a new street grid. However, large-scale developments like this tend not to provide the diverse and fine-grained built environments pedestrians tend to love, like the neighborhoods in lower Manhattan prominently featured in Tysons design standards documents.

The Boro is the first place in Tysons where it’s possible to see a new grid taking shape. The majority of Tysons’ new housing is being delivered in locations more like the Haden building near the McLean station. The development includes hundreds of new apartments in walking distance of the McLean Metro but little else. Abutting Route 123 and a freeway on-ramp, it’s difficult to see how a pleasant pedestrian environment could be carved out of the wide roads surrounding it.

So far, the Tysons redevelopment plan is falling short of its goal to transform the auto-oriented area into walkable neighborhoods. But multifamily housing construction, the plan’s secondary objective, is proceeding rapidly.

This article has been updated to clarify the housing outcomes found in the 2018-2019 progress report for the Tysons Comprehensive Plan.