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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If the walk to the entrance from where the other entrance was supposed to be is truly NBD than why aren't they building the southern entrance and saying people will just have to walk down from the north?

I'm really asking, I'm not being snarky.  Because right now it just seems like they're sticking it to the people that have already built in the south for the purposes of still enticing developers for the to be built area in the north.[/quote]

I think they found that the southern mezzanine was more expensive to build than the northern one.  [/quote]

The south mezzanine costs [b]about $10M more [/b]than the north because it had an extra ramp. [b]In the grand scheme of the project it’s a small difference. 
[/b]
The real reason is that more of the tax revenue is associated with the north and they can’t affort to lose that one. The city believes (correctly, based on data) that commercial development only happen within about 1/4-1/3 mile of the station entrance, so deleting the north mezzanine means no development of the existing shopping center and no commercial tax revenue. Not doing the south also means this, but to a smaller extent and more impacting people who are already stuck versus hypothetical future residents and businesses who can still choose not to come because they haven’t built yet.

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Completely agreed.  Too bad it their sneakiness comes at[b] the expense of the early adopters [/b](the people in the south).  I do think though that we all need to DEMAND that the city fix the issue with the association serving people who are blind.  It is completely unacceptable that our city leaders knowingly duped them.[/quote]

They have also dropped the tax contributions toward the station of the people in PY south.  So I take it this is admission that the benefits metro access exceeded the cost of the tax contribution for those folks?  They did not say that when the contribution was discussed, IIRC. [/quote]

This is not correct.

First of all, there are two tax districts in PY South--both of which predate any actual residents in the area.  The Tier I STD applies to multi-family units and it is in force and collecting money now (more money than the city expected actually), and continues to be going forward.  The Tier II STD applies only to the individual townhomes and condos in PY south (but not to Potomac Greens, which was resident's main concern about it).  The Tier II STD starts once the metro opens, and it is still on the books.

The Tier II STD is supposed to generate about $20M in revenue for the project overall.  But now Dominion needs to put a high voltage line down the length of a street in Potomac Yard - and they will pay $40M+ to the city for the rights to do it.  So the city and residents negotiated a trade - If that Dominion line and payment happens, then the payment from Dominion should be used to remove that Tier II STD.

That trade all felt relatively fair as a Potomac Yard resident - until we found out that the city was aware that we no longer had a station entrance when they negotiated it with us.

The city did pass a resolution two weeks ago making that trade formal.  So yes, if dominion runs that high voltage line through potomac yard and the city gets a big payment, part of that payment will be used to remove the STD.  But it had nothing to do with the benefits and costs of metro, or with the removal of our metro entrance at all.

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