Prince George’s County, Maryland will soon showcase an attractive, eco-friendly transit village around the existing Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) West Hyattsville Metrorail Station. The program for “Hyattsville Station” has moved quickly from concept (completed in 2003) to master development plan (completed in June 2004) due to the vision, cooperation, and vigorous contribution of state, county, and local stakeholders. The project provides a model transit oriented design (TOD) planning process that is intended for replication at the other 14 Metrorail stations throughout the county.

PB’s Involvement

The final plan evolved through work PB PlaceMaking¹, began in 2002 when retained by the state of Maryland to examine the TOD potential of the area surrounding the West Hyattsville Metro Station. Our staff led a team of consultants in establishing a process and strategy for applying principles, features and benefits of sustainable development to the project.

Our team conducted an intensive, week-long design charrette—an open, holistic planning technique that combines intense, creative work sessions with public workshops and open houses. This step was critical to meeting the fast track-schedule. The process focused on producing a detailed project development plan and creating a collaborative atmosphere in which each of the participants could influence each other without their “sovereignty.” This approach has contributed significantly to the project’s rapid advance due to the strength of the plan’s vision and community acceptance.

Figure 1: Artist’s Rendering of Hyattsville Station

New Transit Village Features Livability and Sustainability

Hyattsville Station (Figure 1) will be the first compact, mixed-use, “green transit village” developed in Prince George’s County, Maryland. It will feature up to approximately 3,600 new residential units offering a diversity of housing choices focused on home ownership, and approximately 92,000 m² (1 million square feet) of commercial space—creating more than 4,000 jobs.

The master development plan is based on three key elements—neighborhood, environment and transportation, each of which is related to the others.

Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are the basic social and cultural building block of community infrastructure. They form identifiable areas, encouraging residents to take responsibility for their maintenance and evolution. Three distinct neighborhoods are envisioned as part of the plan:

• Hamilton Square. This, the most active neighborhood, is characterized by an intense mixture of uses, the tallest buildings, a central town square, formal landscaping settings and orientation to the multimodal transit center.
• North Park. This primarily residential area is characterized by a diverse mix of housing types, a system of “green streets, natural areas and pocket parks. Three landmark residential towers offer outstanding views of the Stream Valley Park and provide visual surveillance, increasing the safety of the park. North Park will benefit from its direct connection to the Metro Station and Stream Valley Park.
• Queenstown. This neighborhood is envisioned as a lively arts district located just south of Stream Valley Park. It will contain a unique marketplace of ethnic goods, and arts and crafts created by local artisans in the adjacent, architecturally exciting, live/work studio residences. The neighborhood focal point is an active neighborhood park and adjacent wetland with trails.

Environment

Our team and many of the stakeholders advocated strongly that environmental stewardship be fundamental to the Hyattsville Station Plan. Our team proposed a fully integrated sustainable community approach that incorporated multiple green building techniques. These features included:

• Parks. An integrated system of civic, park and open spaces will provide opportunities for recreation, social interaction and environmental enhancement with native plantings and state-of-the-art stormwater management devices.
• Floodplain and Stormwater. The plan integrates a full complement of bio-filtration methods for stormwater retention and treatment throughout the community as part of a multi-faceted floodplain remediation and stormwater management approach to reduce stormwater runoff, improve water quality, and enhance the natural environment for residents and wildlife.
• Green Roofs. A green space on top of a habitable structured consisting of waterproofing, root repellency, drainage and filtration, growing medium and select vegetation) will be a required technique for buildings throughout Hyattsville Station. These“green” or “eco-roofs” eliminate runoff during most rain storms, reduce pre-development runoff conditions, and save energy through reduced cooling demands.
• LEED. This standard² was promoted as a requirement of development and implementation of a comprehensive form-based code drafted by our team. PB made LEED certification the standard for all development proposals.

Transportation

A finely balanced street and circulation network will maximize the accessibility of the site’s features to one another, to the surrounding community, and to transit stations up and down the METRO line. Features of the network include:

• Pedestrian Emphasis. The development provides pedestrians the freedom to move about in a safe, comfortable and convenient environment.
• Green Streets. Several green streets are strategically located to integrate with the overall open space system and provide routes for stormwater to be surface drained, infiltrated and filtered.
• Grid Network of Streets. A grid network provides a logical and orderly streets system allowing residents and visitors to easily orient and connect with their destination.
• Bicycle Integration. Bicycle lanes and off-street trails provide a safe and convenient alternative to auto use. On-site bicycle parking facilities are a requirement of development.
• Managed Parking. As development around Hyattsville Station evolves, it is expected that the number of commuters driving to the station from lower density areas will gradually decrease—while ridership is expected to stay at current levels or increase. WMATA has, therefore, revised its development and parking policy, permitting parking at its park-and-ride lots to be replaced at a ratio lower than one-to-one.

Financial Feasibility Key to Success

Placemaking cannot occur without a financially feasible project. As part of the process, our team explored the plan’s overall viability and the value of various implementation strategies. Models were constructed for potential development revenues, development costs and resulting land residual values. Grants and other programs that could be used to finance various project components were identified. From this detailed analysis, a preferred financing strategy was developed, demonstrating that an aggressive TOD scheme performed best, generating positive returns for all stakeholder parties.

Key to this effort was an exploration of how state-supported TOD outreach could assist WMATA and Prince George’s County in attracting private-sector interest and investment through public-private partnerships. This was based on the realization that, in many cases, neither the development community nor the public sector can effectively advance the effort on its own. This effort resulted in the creation of a marketing brochure and TOD PowerPoint presentation as tools for the county’s use in attracting developers who share the same vision.

Placemaking Can Require Zoning Changes

Among other things, the planning study showed that the existing zoning code was not conducive to an environmentally sustainable TOD stategy and, thus, required a major shift to a form-based design program, in which a fairly wide range of land uses would be permitted under the strict guidance of sustainable development practices. The focus would not only be on what the proposed use was, but more importantly on how the use was implemented. In other words, if a developer proposed a building with the proper detailing (height, orientation, massing, etc.) than the code is flexible in terms of the use contained within the building. We prepared a total rewrite of the Hyattsville Station local development code (completed in June 2004) using sustainable development standards as the standard requirement for development.

Conclusion

The Hyattsville Station transit village strategy is an example of what it means to “make places” that foster sustainability. It incorporates the best qualities of traditional village neighborhoods with a rich mix of civic amenities, home choices, retail services and employment, all situated within a green environment. It is scaled to humans—compact and walkable. Through its careful integration of land use and transportation, it protects and enhances the natural environment, promotes community life, and creates quality development while revitalizing surrounding landscapes and neighborhoods.