Plans for Crystal City Metro’s second entrance are moving forward

Crystal City Metro will soon be one step closer to getting a second entrance. The Arlington County Board is set to approve an interim agreement on Saturday with real-estate company JBG Smith. If approved, it will provide funding for the developer to come up with technical construction plans and a cost estimate of the project.

Arlington has long planned to construct a second entrance for Crystal City Metro station on Crystal Drive. The entrance was envisioned as part of the 2010 Crystal City Sector Plan, and a 2014 study conducted by Arlington and Metro found three possible locations. The chosen site is at Crystal Drive and 18th Street which is down the hill from the existing entrance and near where the expanded Crystal City VRE station will be built.

GGWash previously wrote about the second entrance project last July. At that time, JBG Smith sent an unsolicited proposal to Arlington in which they proposed that JBG be in charge of the entrance’s design and construction, while Arlington would pay for the project. The second entrance is “critical to the future of National Landing and Crystal Drive,” JBG Smith VP Jay Corbalis said at the time. Corbalis is acting as JBG Smith’s project director for the second entrance project.

JBG Smith is a major real-estate owner in the Crystal City area and was selected by Amazon for its second headquarters, known as HQ2. Amazon plans to employ at least 25,000 people with “high-wage” jobs in the Pentagon City, Crystal City, and Potomac Yard neighborhoods (which they have dubbed “National Landing”) over the next 12 years.

Arlington received $5 million from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority in 2018 which was to be used for preliminary engineering efforts before construction began. The county plans to approve $3.73 million of that for the JBG Smith-led effort to come up with those preliminary 30% design plans that should be detailed enough to tell the county how much full construction of the entrance will cost.

The county hopes to use $53 million in state transportation funding for the construction of the new entrance, but estimates the entire project could be $90 million.

The interim agreement between JBG Smith and Arlington asserts that if work begins now, those preliminary 30% design plans can be created by the end of March 2021, at which point three public meetings would be held to gather feedback. It says that construction of the entrance could begin as early as July 2021 and be finished and completed by the end of 2023.

A separate county project intends to build a second entrance at the Ballston Metrorail station.