What’s happening with the old White Flint mall development?

[Anonymous]

We need to abolish the zoning and planning offices and just let developers build. It’s ridiculous that that plot has been vacant for so long

[Anonymous]

This is fascinating. The Lerner's own the land and can do what they want to it when they want to it. If you moved, but kept your home for whatever reason, would you want a council member telling you what to do with it?

My guess is the Lerner's use the land as collateral for whatever their next deal is, borrowing millions against it to create something somewhere, based on the value of the land, which will keep going up.

[Anonymous]

Looks like the Lerners have entered the chat. The idea it is not profitable to develop the land is fantasy. And is there any proof that the Lerners are prioritizing a project in Loudoun county instead? This is valuable land in a prominent location, and if the Lerners don't do anything, the county should take it by eminent domain and sell it to a different developer. If you had 50 acres of land within a few blocks of a metro station and left it as a dead zone, yes I would expect the county to take it by eminent domain and compensate you for it. (See Kelo v. City of New London.) I hope Jawando brings this up as a campaign issue and makes that commitment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We need to abolish the zoning and planning offices and just let developers build. It’s ridiculous that that plot has been vacant for so long

You think they’re not building because it’s not zoned right? What is it zoned for now and what should it be zoned for?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Which one of the candidates for County Exec is going to move along whatever the heck is supposed to be happening at this site? Nothing until election 2028? The country is going to take decades to recover from what has taken place in the last 1.5 years. Will the health campus to make a biomedical triangle pan out?

Not Friedson. He is taking lots of money from the Lerners, who are content to sit on this land.

Isn't the more likely scenario that Friedson pays the Lerners gobs upon gobs of money to develop the site, and also doesn't make the Lerners pay any property taxes for the next 10,000 years? And then we'll get some really expensive apartments (with maybe a few MPDUs thrown in) and that will make the stupid YIMBYs happy.

I’d much rather apartments for young professionals than retirement homes or whatever people proposed up thread. Young professionals bring new and interesting restaurants and nice stores.

No objection from me. I don't care what it is; by all means, let developers build whatever they think will be most profitable for them, and let them charge as much as they think people will pay. The problem, however, is that people like Friedson seem to think that we should give gobs and gobs of money and tax breaks to developers to get them to build. The point that I think Elrich has made is that projects like high-rent apartments in desirable, metro-accessible areas are highly profitable, so why do we need to pay developers to build them.

Well if we didn’t need to pay them why is White Flint Mall not being redeveloped then? You seem to think that the Lerners are sitting on it because they have some sentimental ties to the land. They don’t. They’re just not getting a good offer because developers would rather build 40-50 miles away from DC in Loudoun County rather than 4-5 miles from DC at White Flint because they don’t want the headaches that come with building in MoCo.

That’s a problem. And electing someone like Friedson, a moderate Dem by MoCo standards, will solve that.

They’re not building because Federal Realty beat them to market with Pike and Rose. There is simply not enough demand for retail, office, or housing in that corridor to justify building at White Flint right now. True free market believers would wait for the market to adjust or be happy for the Lerners to sell the land for less money to someone else. But that’s not the YIMBYs. They’re just looking for handouts so no developer is left behind.

Yes, Friedson will be happy to forgive taxes on White Flint as he has for other donors. No, whatever he passes won’t lead to development at White Flint. Friedson will create a generous package with generous timelines so the Lerners can wait for demand to be sufficient to guarantee top dollar rents while still getting the tax abatement. That’s how Friedson’s incentives always work. It pays to donate.

The right market intervention is higher taxes on the land as it exists today so that doing nothing is too expensive. Friedson will not do that.