Comments on: The West Hyattsville Enigma

By: MTG

MTG — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:51:27 +0000

Well said MKN.
I continue to walk to the W Hyattsville Metro and it is almost as if the West Hyattsville station was designed to frustrate pedestrians.
Also, the commercial development nearby is decidely down-market.Used Car dealers, a run down bar, nail and pawn shops etc.
The designs for TOD are encouraging but seem to be stalled. Mr. Jack Johnson has also been cited as a major obstacle. I don’t know how true this is but my guess would be that he is looking for a way that he or his cronies can line their pockets on the deal.

By: MKN

MKN — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 03:02:20 +0000

I used to live in West Hyattsville, and walked or biked to this station every weekday. What is not viewable on the images above is just how pedestrian un-friendly the area around the station is. The roads surrounding the station to the north and east (Ager, Hamilton, Queens Chapel) have fast-moving traffice and only intermittent sidewalks. The streets are primarily commercial, with parking lots and drive-throughs fronting onto the roads. To the south and west, the station is cut off from residential and commercial areas by the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia river, and another unwalkable 4-lane road (Chillum) . The station itself is very car-centric; instead of putting the station entrance near the main pedestrian crossing, it is set far back fromthe street and pedestrians must traverse a large parking lot.

By: DC1974

DC1974 — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:06:00 +0000

There was an article in the Oakland Tribune about the 35th anniversary of BART. One of the statements that was made in the article was how BART was supposed to end sprawl by creating transit neighborhoods around the stations, that didn’t happen until the last 5 years or so. In part because people seemed to think that this was just going to magically happen with no intervention by BART or by the counties and cities whose land this was near. I think other cities are starting to pay attention, though. As a Chicagoan, I may attention to development news there — and Metra has expanded recently, but as part of those new stations there has been an amount of preplanning to prepare county and township plans to rezone the adjacent land for more compact development, and PUDs. All of this has to be in the planning stages when new stations and lines are introduced.

By: Rob Goodspeed

Rob Goodspeed — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:13:38 +0000

Hey Scott, good question. I wasn't able to check until today because the Prince George's County GIS website only works with Internet Explorer on Windows machines! It looks like the two fields are owned by WMATA, and the large abandoned warehouse sits on 18 acres sold to this company in 1997 for $1.2 million: GUNSTON HALL REALTY INC 7643 FULLERTON RD SPRINGFIELD, VA 22153-2815 It turns out that WMATA had announced an agreement with the owner for a development at this station in 2004, but nothing has happened since. Although it's easy to focus on WMATA, there are a number of other properties in the area falling under the new zoning that could take advantage of the proximity to transit.

By: Scott T.

Scott T. — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 03:56:58 +0000

So who owns property around the Metro stop? Is it a Mexican stand-off type situation where nobody wants to be the first to sell/build since the higher markups come when things are already well under way? Are the majority landowners interested in selling nearby property at all?

(Devil’s Advocate) I think I found an argument to support the typical corrupt scheme of giving political insiders details on the ultimate location of a new transit development so they can buy up the land before the plan goes public. You concentrate the land into a few hands who are eager to flip and make a quick buck. When the roads/rails are built, they work hard to make things happen. When the corrupt “pre sale” doesn’t happen, perhaps you’re more likely to get the “first mover” problem because ownership is more fragmented and with diverse interests?