The Challenge of Providing Future Infrastructure in an Environment of Limited Resources, New Technologies, and Changing Social Paradigms Proceedings of a Colloquium, March 24, 1995 (1995) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Alexandria 20/20, The Potomac Yards Redevelopment: Private/Public Interactions in The Provision of Infrastructure
Alexandria 20/20, The Potomac Yards Redevelopment: Private/Public Interactions in The Provision of Infrastructure
Pages 1-22
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
A real quandary exists, for both the development company and the public sector, in trying to balance which infrastructure investments are made publicly and what a private developer should provide. My other theory based on my public sector experience and one that I still hold as truth, is my belief Hat there are three issues in infrastructure which form the basis of all growth and development; what !
|
From page 2... ...
Those real estate assets are in all different phases of development; we have some rather large holdings that, at this point, are good for nothing other than land banking. We have some land resources here in the Washington Metropolitan Area that you may have seen flying into Washington National Airport.
|
From page 3... ...
It was a classification yard that broke down shipments from the North into specific destinations heading to cities in the South, and vice versa on the northern track. Because of economic pressures, competition largely from over-the-road hauls, air freight, and a not-so-subtle pressure by the federal government to move freight lines from the seaboard into the interior valley system the five railroads who jointly managed this yard decided to terminate their rail agreements, move forward with the disposition of their individual assets on it, and return the land as previously agreed to the RF&P.
|
From page 4... ...
The master plan is one of our primary concepts in moving the Potomac Yards project forward. Unlike Crystal City, which developed a parcel at a time there would be a block developed, warehousing still remaining on the rest of the acreage and then another small acreage block developed sequentially.
|
From page 5... ...
Route ~ exists a rail corridor which is served at the moment, by Amtrak and also used for through freight and commuter rail. On the eastern portion of our property is the Metro transit line.
|
From page 6... ...
Alexandria's sewers are old and part of a combined sewer overflow system. That means, when a storm or a rain event, occurs, drainage goes into the sewer system, basically overloads all the treatment facilities, and somewhat diluted sewage flows into receiving streams.
|
From page 7... ...
It is a pretty simple connection. In terms of a broader social theory, what we think is at work here is that northern Virginia, like many urban areas, is soon going to be at the point-if it is not aIready-where you are going to start defining quality of life as access to transit alternatives.
|
From page 8... ...
We looked at bus access; on-site light rail or people movers to distribute people on the site; satellite parking and shuttles; car pool staging areas; parking policies, getting in commuter rail. We looked at high-speed ferry service, because we are adjacent to Me Potomac River and Me airport.
|
From page 9... ...
There was a political dynamic, or the social paradigm here between benefits to the City of the City Plan, and the political reality of trying to keep down development and its aspects. The third transportation study we did was wig Arlington County to the north, on a joint basis with them, and, lo and behold, that study came up with the same kind of conclusions that both our study and the City's study reached.
|
From page 10... ...
Because the city staff was somewhat tardy-a year and a half late coming out with their plan-the City Council had an election between the time that we produced our plan and the city staff was to produce their plan. So in response to some no growth actuals, the City Counci} members came up with their own plan; which unfortunately was not based on any analysis or technical work.
|
From page 11... ...
Approximately 3 weeks after we filed the suits, the Governor of Virginia and the owner of the Washington Redskins football team announced Potomac Yards as their choice as a site for a new stadium. We were off to the races with a stadium.
|
From page 12... ...
Why was it constructed that way? it was constructed after a IS-year negotiation period between the City of Alexandria, led by citizens' groups who wanted to restrict traffic in the same area in which the Potomac Yard project is located, and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)
|
From page 13... ...
We just announced a 600,000-square foot value retail center that will open in the spring of 1997 in the area north of the Metro core, and a 500,000-square-foot technology park that will be primarily flex space and warehousing and technology space south of the core. This combination will help provide cash flow on an interim basis, again to start the infrastructure needed to put the Metro in, by the year 2000.
|
From page 14... ...
First, who did the master plan? We did have a complete team of consultants that basically worked under my direction.
|
From page 15... ...
In the middle, a City Council election took place, where people got political advantage from saying there should be less as opposed to more growth. And Mat started to skew this process.
|
From page 16... ...
All of those studies have capped our liability at about the $13 million range, which is very good news for us. This site has contamination much more similar to a normal industrial site than it does a rail site.
|
From page 17... ...
Some of them were retail jobs, or there are proportions within every industry, for example of retailing. Let us say we had proposed about 600,000 square feet of retailing, which we are now going to implement on an interim basis.
|
From page 18... ...
There were neighborhood schools in the area that were actually not at capacity. And the thing that the school system was interested in really was our providing some space on an offside, nonhours classroom basis for adult education.
|
From page 19... ...
It is an eyesore. r Will tell you that there have been some purchases in there by people like the IBM pension fund and this type of thing, that have purchased large blocks of that industry land, that are currently in interim use-industrial-and it is their hope, according to my information and discussion with them, that as soon as development starts on our side with the Metro station and this type of thing, that they can change the use of that edge.
|
From page 20... ...
The other thing that we are looking at seriously now with public entities and the legislature is the possibility of creation of special tax districts to basically finance-somebody
|
From page 21... ...
Alexandria 20/20, The Potomac Yards Redevelopment 21 asked about environmental and financing; ~ think r Gil not approach that yet-but to provide a public financing mechanism to float bonds so that the payment for this infrastructure is at the lowest level, using the public interest rate in order to move it forward.
|
From page 22... ...
RF&P Corporation is a real estate company with nearly $700 million in assets including over 5,000 acres of land and development activities encompassing nearly 9.5 million square feet of building space. He has held numerous high level public sector positions including Deputy County Executive for Planning and Development with Fairfax County, Virginia, Chief Administrative Officer for the Metropolitan Service District of Portland, Oregon, and He Director of Community Development of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.