Department of Duh: Apartments not always successful next to transit stations
Bisnow, a real estate information company, ran a conference on Prince George's County and in their write up of the event, "Why Building Apartments Next To Suburban D.C. Metro Stations Doesn't Always Work," they make the point that you can't just construct a building anywhere. From the article:
Developers see suburban Metro stations as some of the most prime opportunities in the D.C. region, and Prince George's County in particular has several undeveloped transit stops that appear to make it poised for growth. But some developers who have done transit-oriented projects in the county say it is not as simple as just building apartments on top of a Metro stop.Duh. I've been making that point for years and years, even before I got "schooled" on this while analyzing various MARC train stations in Baltimore County when I worked there.
The Metro-centric developments that have had the most success have included a host of retail and restaurant offerings, neighborhood services and employment opportunities, Transwestern Mid-Atlantic Multifamily Group co-director Robin Williams said. "A handful of others have had residential but not accessibility to employment and/or walkable lifestyle amenities," said Williams, speaking Thursday at Bisnow's Prince George's County State of the Market, held at The Hotel at UMD. "And we've seen some real struggles there."
-- "Tips for urban revitalization, including transit," 2009
-- "What matters isn't "transit oriented development": what really matters is compact development and integrating transportation and land use," 2011
-- "What the State of Maryland still doesn't get about smart growth," 2011
-- "Bad Montgomery County policy/law initiative #1: removing density bonuses for building around MARC train stations," 2012
-- "Prince George's County still doesn't get "transit oriented development" and walkable communities: Greenbelt edition," 2012
It's about both transit access and place and urban design characteristics simultaneously. I wrote this in the 2009 piece:
So a couple lessons are: (1) put the stations in places with the right morphology. This includes a focus on active streets and streetscape. (2) have a station area plan, especially if the spatial patterns need to be changed. (3) have an economic development plan focused on sparking new development where appropriate, and improvement of existing buildings and businesses.Note that Metrorail, a hybrid commuter railroad and heavy rail subway system, has the same issue. Distant stations, especially endpoints, without place characteristics, haven't been particularly successful as development nodes.
And it's an illustration of the problem of the failure to codify the lessons from Metrorail and transit oriented development in the DC area.
Basically it's worked really well where there are existing centers and nodes, even if the process takes decades.
It hasn't worked so well where the station connections are distant from centers and nodes, even if they are somewhat proximate (Alexandria is something of an exception, but they'd do way better if there was a more central connection within the core). It hasn't worked so well in sparking improvement in areas that are disconnected from centers and nodes (e.g. West Hyattsville, Greenbelt, Vienna). And it could work a lot better if there was a strong focus on urban design and connection (Prince Georges Plaza, Fort Totten).
And this is pretty much the case across the board. I know it's true in Greater Baltimore, although there it's abetted by the failure to have a transit network rather than two truncated lines.
That's the case in Miami, where many of the stations were located in places "that needed development," not in locations that were already successful and destinations. It's true with the BART system, even stations touted for what became unsuccessful TOD projects like at Fruitvale in Oakland ("Bitter fruit in Fruitvale," 2006).
You need station area plans and a means to effectuate them. More recently, I've argued that station areas need to have "public improvement districts" created even before they open.
-- "(In many places) Public improvement districts ought to be created as part of transit station development process: the east side of NoMA station as an example," 2016
(I am about to write a piece about this and the Purple Line, using Takoma Crossroads/Langley Park as an example.)
And similarly, we need to create TMDs as a matter of course for station catchment areas.
-- "Creating transportation management districts (sustainable mobility districts) as an organizing framework," 2017
If we did this, there would be much faster improvement and a greater take up of sustainable modes than through the trickle down processes that occur as part of the "market."
Building it is key. But they have to be given a good reason "to come" if they are comfortable with existing transportation and land use processes.
Labels: economic development planning, land use planning, real estate development, sustainable land use and resource planning, transit oriented development, transportation planning
posted by Richard Layman @ 11:05 AM&Permanent Link
14 Comments:
The 'what' that isn't working or the struggle wasn't clearly communicated.
Is it the bulk of transit rides being from the suburbs to the city and not much vis versa? My spouse experiences that via his car commute, as he cruises up Rt 1 past the MD license plates heading in the opposite direction. Same for my neighbor who rides the Green line and has the option to sit, whereas I, heading in the other direction don't.
Is the struggle the vast parking lots that act as a buffer between the stations and everything else? That's the problem with parts of Greenbelt and College Park and all of Suitland. PG Plaza is getting there. There are more amenities and new housing there than there was 10 years ago.
I've been slowly reading a 2001 journal article about the Black Middle Class in suburbs and one assertion made by the author Sheryll D. Cashin, is that the anti-development is baked in. I noticed it as soon as I started living in the area, comparing PG Co to MoCo & NoVA. I swear PG does not believe in functional sidewalks and has no concept of how bike lanes are supposed to work. It's like a steakhouse menu designed by a vegetarian. So PG is going to suck at walk-ability because the elements of walkability are incompatible to the PG powers that be and their car centric residents' concept of good and right living.
Maybe a vegan menu designed by a meat and potatoes person, would have been a better analogy.
that just because you have a transit station doesn't make it attractive for apartments. I don't know if you've seen the Halethorpe station in Baltimore County.
It's well used, not by area residents but because it's accessible from the Baltimore Beltway. And actually, it's astride a community, Arbutus, that has some potential, but you can't just throw up some apartment buildings and expect people to move in because it's "transit oriented" or in this case "transit adjacent."
It's the difference between living at Fort Totten vs. Columbia Heights.
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I haven't read that book, but I think I would disagree a bit. The urban design of PG County, yes, is bad. But that predates black political and economic dominance and a majority in the county.
... but at the same time, you don't have African-Americans standing up and advocating for high quality urban design and walkable communities.
... this is a problem in DC too. And the subject of _Between Justice and Beauty_ by Howard Gillette.
It's a tricky subject in part because the majority of whites aren't all that interested in urban design either, but happy to benefit from its pre-existence.
I wrote about it re suburban Atlanta within this entry:
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2016/05/housing-roundup.html
where I made the point that maybe the reason that housing values haven't recovered is because the place value is lacking, that it isn't racism specifically.
This is worthy of more study, definitely.
In PG County, to some extent, because it was built around trolley service, Rte. 1 communities have some semblance of urbanism, but not particularly dense.
In the New Urbanism transect, where I live would be T4 (blocks, but detached, somewhat dense), where you live would be T5 (attached, dense, but not like downtown which would be T6). Most of the land alongside Rte. 1 is T3. But the block sizes are reasonable.
PG Plaza is a good example of a dense area with limited place value, difficult to walk, etc.
It illustrates your point.
I forgot to mention in this post that one of the interesting things that came out of the crash was that certain cities, like DC, basically maintained their property values.
People from other parts of the country came here during the crash expecting to buy a Georgetown house for under $400,000. Didn't happen. Yes there were foreclosures in DC, but not that many, and housing prices especially in the core, stayed high. They dropped off in less attractive neighborhoods in the outer city sure (not Tenleytown, AU Park, Friendship Heights, etc.). But since, with limited supply, the outer city is appreciating quite a bit too.
I once heard Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink speak at a preservation conference, and I summarized her speech in two words she wants "equitable sprawl."
It does get back to the access argument, and social justice being seen as more important than aesthetic questions.
Although again, in terms of maintenance of housing values during periods of economic shock, I'd argue that place considerations matter.
P.S. Did you see the cite that charlie gave in another entry, a piece by Henry Grabar of Slate on white perceptions of black space?
I've been in and through Halethorpe because of a rental property I have in Baltimore. The Halethorpe Home Depot is the closest and I've been through the MARC station many, many times. When we take the depressing scenic Rt 1 back to DC I see a lot of apartments and house farms (where they grow residential housing) out in the middle of nowhere.
So that takes me back to what objective metrics are used to determine that something is not working or success? Are these residential projects burdened by higher than expected vacancy rates?
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The article I mentioned is mainly about integration. I will take a look at the Slate article.
PG County suffered in the 2008 crash with a buttload of foreclosures, more than MoCo. Of the suburban areas inside the Beltway it is still the most affordable. It's also very car centric and the buses still suck. The schools are meh.
Remember that there is diversity within and among African Americans, Expecting Black leadership in PG County government to play a particular role, that in majority white situations would be played, would be typecasting. Middle class AfAms may be trying to create a space that excludes poorer AfAms and may see public transit and walk ability as things that undermine those strictly middle class spaces. You as a middle class white person can escape poor white people in your residential choices. There are Black people who would like that same luxury of a neighborhood of people who look like them with incomes and work lives like them.
Hmm. I always thought of it as a lag in understanding the value of urban design and walkability vs. the "American Dream" and automobility.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/95438294
But yes, I see your point. A different story. When I worked briefly in Baltimore County and I talked with a planner there, she talked about how in Middle River/Dundalk and that area, people saw "bungalows" as bad because that was housing typical of Baltimore, and Baltimore was categorically seen as bad.
The big thing and it's hard to figure out, is that "life" and the microeconomies of residential neighborhoods aren't fixed, it changes and mutates, and the land use and transportation paradigm of the 1950s-1970s only works when the US is overwhelming wealthy compared to the rest of the world and gas is cheap.
The concept of resiliency is relevant and I mention it a fair amount.
Maybe I am wrong but I don't think of "urban design" as a race construct. Going back to the Peter Muller article (which is based on earlier research) that lays out the difference between Walking City, Transit City, and Metropolitan (Automobile) City.
The thing that was different in this period post-recession is that for the most part center city properties held their value (at least in the strong and medium markets, not the weak markets, e.g., Baltimore or Detroit). Pittsburgh is doing way better these days even though it was a weak market still before the recession. Many neighborhoods in Philadelphia have turned the corner, etc.
That's the basic point I was making in that discussion about Suburban Atlanta. I think it's fully relevant to PG County too, as I've mentioned in the past.
How do you make the argument to people that just because they are against transit, walkability etc. to keep out the riff raff (that's another story in East Baltimore County from planning, where residents put anti-transit language in a draft community plan--the transpo planner at DPW was livid, but the community planner in the planning office didn't say a thing), in the 21st century, to do so is to consign their neighborhoods to decline.
That being said I do think that in high income metros plenty of traditional suburban neighborhoods will do just fine.
But e.g., in 2011 I wrote how the Silver Line wasn't about access to Dulles, but to reposition the core of Fairfax and Loudoun for 21st century housing and office preferences. E.g., the whitewashed urban experience of Reston Town Center or Tysons vs. DC.
They're playing both sides. Providing both types of neighborhoods. But that being said, automobile centric and disconnected residential and commercial "neighborhoods" are on the decline in terms of value in many places.
sorry. I didn't answer your basic question.
Vacancy rates.
The issue isn't just housing at a transit station. It's whether or not the transit station catchment area has the place qualities of the transit/walking city. If not, just because it's at a transit station isn't enough for denser multiunit housing to be successful.
And the failures aren't only in the burbs. Both Fort Totten and Rhode Island Metro stations are examples of failing to replat the land there before development to create a more defined grid with blocks more typical of the rest of the city. (The same should be done on Benning Road's RFK parking lots.)
West Hyattsville is a good example of that in PG. So is PG Plaza. And Largo Town Center "bigly."
Okay let's get back to defining success with objective metrics. So the way I am reading you, success is attracting denser residential housing and retail to areas that are not, turning T3 areas into T5 or T6 in X # of years?
You mention more defined grid systems, that requires the local government to create streets where before there were none. It may involve eminent domain, displacement, and other things that make the process lengthier.Or would you have the developer create the roads from a large swath of property. Then the developer has different incentive regarding the layout. Do the developers think a grid system will sell to the prospective end buyer? Cul-de-sacs are still attractive. Also keep in mind current residents, particularly organized and active residential groups will fight development for density. There are people who like less density and will pay for and fight to have more personal space.
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"How do you make the argument to people that just because they are against transit, walkability etc. to keep out the riff raff (snip), in the 21st century, to do so is to consign their neighborhoods to decline"? Your question assumes the neighborhood will decline. You need to sell transit and walkability to the current residents and voters. In some places people might buy it as an extra amenity if their area is already expensive and housing costs exclude low income people.
more simply, I'm saying don't even bother.
In terms of building a grid, yes, put it in the zoning code, and do TIF funding to pay for the roads.
Developers be damned...
I suggested that for a proposed project in Baltimore County near the Falls Road light rail station. (Because the person I criticized in the proposal was the person who became the planning director after the next election, I figure that's a goodly part of the reason I am not still working in Baltimore County.) But the county is very conservative economically with limited experience with that form of advance funding/priming the pump.
Yes, I assume the neighborhoods are likely to decline, because economic considerations have changed and the "old way" won't work too well for most places, although it will continue to work very well for some.
... that being said, yes this is the crux:
You need to sell transit and walkability to the current residents and voters. In some places people might buy it as an extra amenity if their area is already expensive and housing costs exclude low income people.
And it's very very very difficult. Even in communities like DC or Montgomery County (or Columbia Pike in Arlington County) that ought to be deeply familiar with the value of transit.
cf. all my pieces on the Purple Line. It raises the same issues. At least with the creation of the new infrastructure you have an "excuse" to start with the repatterning there. And that's something PG should have done with the Largo Metrorail station as it was an infill station.
But you're absolutely right that moving this way is very very hard.
So do it in the places where it wouldn't be so hard to do it (e.g., Fort Totten, Rhode Island, West Hyattsville, Princes Georges Plaza, Largo, West Baltimore, etc.) and work from there.
WRT Baltimore, I am amazed at those neighborhoods west of Camden Station, within a 15 minute walk from the station. Granted you don't have the amenities yet, but great housing stock, Hollins Market is getting redone, etc. Focus there before Halethorpe...
more on Baltimore transit soon in an upcoming post.
Okay, I'm going to end this part of my input with it looks like success is subjective.
Regarding Baltimore. When looking for an investment property, I mapped out areas that were a yes, a maybe, a no and a aw hells no. Barre Circle, was an unaffordable yes. Parts of Washington Village was a yes, maybe. But west of Cross was a no. Mt. Clare was a f'ing hell no and next door Hollins Market was a mix of maybe, no. Housing stock had nothing to do with those evaluations. The people who lived, worked and were in those neighborhoods had a lot to do with my research. My rental is a 17 minute brisk walk to the MARC platform. The problem with that walking commute is crossing MLK. MLK has a number of junkies, homeless camps and aggressive panhandlers along it. This is a turn off to middle class drivers and seems dangerous to some pedestrians.
I really liked parts of Union Square but the problem was you had to walk through less attractive areas to get to the nearby downtown, the light rail or the MARC stations.
Take a look at this video https://youtu.be/TWOxdOi9MqY about an Airbnb host in what looks like Hollins Market. To some the area does not look safe. It could be just as safe as Federal Hill, but appearances matter. Yes, transportation options and proximity to downtown and major transit are attractive, but the presence of 'scary' looking people take away from that attractiveness.
... but my girlfriend of then and I chose to live in the H St. NE neighborhood in Sept. 1987 (actually she picked the spot, I joined a couple months later). "It's by Union Station." Then there were maybe 6 white people who lived north of H St. NE.
Anyway, yes, I was ok with more grit then but there is no question that it can take a lot out of you. We had a lot of bad experiences and it cost us our marriage, among other things.
Now, when this kind of residential choice comes up, I say "I don't have the energy to go through that again." That being said, the housing around Union Square is beautiful, but I get what you're saying.
I can't remember which Plank has the master lease for Hollins Market (I think the big one) but over time that could make a difference. The thing is more needs to be invested not just in the housing but in the place characteristics between there and Camden.
It's easy for me to say. Baltimore has so many other needs and priorities.
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