How National Landing landed Amazon

Learn more at the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Summit in 10 days

Just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC is Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington County, VA. While the area is a good place for walking, biking, and transit today there is certainly room for improvement. Route 1—a high speed thoroughfare—runs the entire length of Crystal City effectively separating the various Arlington County neighborhoods.

But improvements are on the way, in part because Amazon chose Crystal City (along with parts of neighboring Potomac Yard and Pentagon City, collectively known as "National Landing") as its next HQ2.

Hear more about National Landing's story! In just one week, we'll be in Arlington, along with 150 developers, transit professionals, elected officials, urban planners, academics, and more for the 2019 LOCUS Leadership Summit: Opportunity Rising. If you haven't bought your ticket yet, now is your last chance.

Why Crystal City?

Amazon had a long list of desires for their second headquarters, but among their core preferences were "access to mass transit at site" and at least half a million square feet of office space with the potential to grow to more than eight million square feet.

Transit was easy: Crystal City and Pentagon City both have metro stations and there is a planned infill station at Potomac Yard just to the south set to open by 2022.

But perhaps more important is the vision that Crystal City has had in place since 2010 to transform the neighborhood into a more walkable, sustainable, human-scaled area. The Crystal City Sector Plan "seeks to encourage new development by providing density and other incentives, improving streets, sidewalks and other public infrastructure, upgrading open space and increasing transit options." Among the planned improvements is transforming the interstate-like Route 1 into an urban boulevard, "linking Crystal City’s east and west neighborhoods."

The plan, developed over four years with ample public input, set the stage for creating the type of place that businesses and people have been flocking to over the last decade. For Crystal City, it paid off and Amazon will jump-start the area's transformation.

Join us next week at the heart of it all for the LOCUS Leadership Summit. We'll kick off the Summit with a walking tour of National Landing on Sunday. Monday will include the LOCUS Leadership Awards, Smart Growth Showcase, the release of our Foot Traffic Ahead report, another walking tour, and sessions covering lessons learned from HQ2, transit-oriented development and the housing crisis, development in opportunity zones, and the impact of climate change on real estate. See the full agenda.

This is one conference you won't want to miss, so get your ticket today. Hope to see you there!

Top image via nationallanding.com/JBG SMITH