Image by George Kevin Jordan.

Nobody puts Tysons in a corner. And now, nobody will put a corner in Tysons — at least not on Metro, after WMATA’s board voted Thursday to rename Tysons Corner station, dubbing it simply “Tysons.”

The change comes at the request of Fairfax County, as part of an effort to rebrand Tysons as officials try to transform it from an office park into a dense, mixed use transit-oriented development.

Tysons has been trying to lose the Corner for years. The Census Bureau and Postal Service already refer to it as simply “Tysons,” but the Metro station opened in 2014 with the Corner attached.

Metro’s board also agreed to another name change: Prince George’s Plaza station will now be known as Hyattsville Crossing. Prince George’s Plaza was named after the nearby mall, which lost that name itself in 2004. Like Tysons, the area is trying to rebrand a developing transit-oriented community.

Both Fairfax and Prince George’s counties will pay $332,000 to implement sign changes and other costs associated with changing the names.

The board voted yes on both name changes, despite public survey results showing that a majority of respondents disliked them. Only 36% of respondents liked the name “Tysons,” and even fewer liked “Hyattsville Crossing.”

In the Safety and Operations Committee meeting preceding the board meeting, WMATA official Lynn Bowersox recommended approving the changes despite the survey results, saying people did agree that both names were easy to remember and described their locations well — people, Bowersox said, are simply resistant to change.

“Doing these changes would allow us to align our station names with the communities, the sense of place that they’re trying to construct,” Bowersox said. “We believe that over time our riders will find these names more directionally appealing.”

  • Tysons Partnership

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of Tysons underwritten by the Tysons Partnership and community partners. Greater Greater Washington maintains full editorial independence over its content.

Libby Solomon was a writer/editor and Managing Editor for GGWash from 2020 to 2022. She was previously a reporter for the Baltimore Sun covering the Baltimore suburbs and a writer for Johns Hopkins University’s Centers for Civic Impact.