WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: As elsewhere in Greater Washington, mixed-use projects around Metro dominate suburban Maryland’s development scene.
Prince George’s County, historically a lower-income bedroom community for D.C., wants to grow, especially along it’s Metro Blue Line corridor. With more Metro stations than any other suburban locality in Greater Washington, and the coming Purple Line, it has a fair bit of potential for transit-oriented development.
The county is in fierce competition with Northern Virginia to land the FBI’s long-awaited new headquarters. One of the proposed sites, Landover Mall, isn’t terribly close to a Metro station, but the other at Greenbelt is. Some have suggested the FBI could do for economic development in Prince George’s something like what the Pentagon has done for Northern Virginia, in terms becoming a government center of gravity around which industry would orbit. It’s also possible the Washington Commanders’ anticipated new stadium-and-entertainment-plex could replace dilapidated FedEx Field in Prince George’s, which is walkable from Metro’s Morgan Boulevard station, which serves the Blue and Silver lines.
Montgomery County has economic aspirations of its own and is well known for its dominance in the life sciences industry. That dominance has attracted new development and office-to-lab conversion projects in recent years, though growth has cooled somewhat since that industry’s red-hot pandemic years.
Still, as yet, neither Prince George’s nor Montgomery has megadevelopments in the works around Metro quite like you’ll find in parts of Northern Virginia, namely, Reston Town Center and Reston Station in Fairfax County, and likely someday Rivana and Moorefield Station in Loudoun County. Although North Bethesda perhaps has the chops to rank on that list – Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said last year the area could accommodate up to 15 million square feet of development, in connection with a new higher education undertaking there focused on artificial intelligence in health care.
Both Montgomery and Prince George’s will probably benefit immensely from the much anticipated, albeit delayed, Purple Line. That light-rail transit corridor would connect several suburban economic centers between the two counties, without dipping into D.C. first, as Metro lines do.
