The kind of shopping malls that have dotted the Washington area’s landscape for decades are fading away, real estate developers said yesterday.
Traditionally, shopping malls have been just that — places to park your car and go shopping.
Increasingly, developers are designing shopping malls to be “more of a mixed-use destination,” said Thomas J. D’Alesandro, vice president of Development General Growth Properties Inc., a developer of the Tysons Galleria complex in Tysons Corner.
Mr. D’Alesandro spoke yesterday at an Urban Land Institute conference on real estate trends at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
Several developers described plans for Tysons Corner that could take decades to complete but would transform the sprawling development into a distinct community with boulevards, green space, shops, offices, hotels and residences. Today, it is primarily a shopping destination but is growing to include more office buildings and hotels.
The developers want to add 3.5 million square feet of commercial and residential space to the 2.1 million square feet at Tysons Corner now.
The plan for Tysons is similar to other projects in the Washington area and elsewhere, such as Columbia Town Center in Maryland, Alexandria Village at Landmark and Summerlin Centre in Nevada.
Developers at the conference said Tysons Corner needs to become more “walkable.”
Surrounding residential areas should contain more town houses and condominiums to reduce the distance between communities, they said.
“Tysons will become a great halfway house for recovering suburbanites,” said Alex Krieger, principal in the Cambridge, Mass., architecture and urban design firm Chan, Krieger Sieniewicz.
But building on the success of Tysons Corner will require money, and lots of it.
A leading contender as a method to finance Tysons Corner expansion is tax increment financing, or TIF. A TIF is a way of using future increases in tax revenue to finance improvements that create the gains.
Projects such as a roads, schools or major commercial developments increase the value of surrounding real estate, often attracting new investment and increasing property and sales tax revenue for local governments.
D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who told the developers that he would continue to support their efforts in Washington, is a supporter of TIFs for urban redevelopment.
However, TIFs require state or municipal approval and cooperation.
“We’re still in those discussions” with Virginia economic development planners to arrange a TIF for Tysons Corner, said Stuart Mendelsohn, a former member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors whose law firm represents commercial developers. “It’s clearly on our plate.”
Other real estate insiders attending the conference were more skeptical, saying grandiose plans do not always live up to reality.
“I just don’t understand how the street grid and the urban space is going to be accomplished when you have multiple land owners with divergent interests,” said John Cibinic, a partner in McLean mortgage consulting firm Beekman Advisors.
• Property Lines runs on Thursdays. Call Tom Ramstack at 202/636-3180 or e-mail tram
stack@washingtontimes.com.
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