Daily Real Estate News  |  June 12, 2007  |   Living Next to the Train Tracks Becomes Fashionable
Mass transit is making room for development, transforming space that was often a graveyard for non-running equipment into multi-use projects that offer housing, retailing, restaurants, and offices steps away from the train station.

Reconnecting America, a national nonprofit that encourages development around transit stops, says there are 100 of these developments around the country, with 100 more on the drawing boards. It predicts that by 2030, there will be 16 million households living near transit stations, up from 6 million today.

The idea is paying off in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington, Va., where there has been 40 million square feet of development near five closely spaced Metro stops. This has helped drive land values in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor up 84 percent from $2.18 billion to $4 billion. The two-square-mile area provides 30 percent of Arlington’s real-estate tax revenues.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Kemba J. Dunham (06/11/07)