[TysonsEngineer]

Great thread in here.

As both a resident of tysons corner and a professional civil engineer who has worked in the development field in northern virginia its been fascinating to watch the development from the planning board to the actually beginning of new proposals as well as shovel ready projects beginning to break ground. I'm proud to say I live in what I consider the first step Tysons took to the urban oriented community of Park Crest One. For the last 2 months Ive been intently watching the new piles and foundations being formed for the Avalon Park Crest, which I hope continues to proceed on pace for open in 2012. Enough about what I like about this thread, heres the developers side to why Fairfax/Tysons hit a homerun with timing

First the board timing, by waiting until the economy was stable (which mostly was also due to the final federal allocation for metro) to really move forward with the public discussion of the new tysons, people didnt automatically discount it as a pipedream. It was clear then that not only did fairfax survive the recessions lowest point but that it could offer a unique benefit to some of the worlds biggest Federal consultant companies of being close to a huge educated employment base and next door to DC.

Second, the other retort for alot of contrarians on Tysons was that so many smaller commercial lots that do solid business would not be willing to sell what has been profitable for them. Well with Capital One, SAIC, and Georgelas kicking it all off it seems that the local Benz dealership really never stood a chance. And best of all, even these big time developments are willing to play ball with what the board has in mind with the new look of Tysons as they know, the more urban Tysons becomes the more attractive of a spot these new office/residences become to the final tenants.

I think the same engine that made Tysons the nightmare sprawl that it became really in the late 90s and early 00s is still at work, but now under correct direction and planning (finally), which means, some of the estimates on how long it really will take, might be shortselling the potential. With big pockets and a green light from planners/county reviewers it is shocking how quickly a 30-40 story building can really pop up. The engineering and architectural road blocks remaining are really pretty small, adequate utilities have been in place well in advance of all this, road network/metro has been well under construction for 2-3 years now, and there is no shortage of construction companies chomping at the bit for a piece of the biggest (atleast financially) urban project in the US.

Over the next couple of months I'll make sure to visit back to this thread with some pictures of things happening above ground (as I know most of you guys could probably care less about what us engineers do below the dirt).