Category: Transit-Oriented Development

Testimony before Martin Grossman, Director of the Office of Zoning and Administrative Hearings in Opposition to Special Exception Request for S-2863, Costco Wholesale Corporation

Posted on by Andrew Brown

Dear Hearing Examiner Grossman:

Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Our non-profit organization works to ensure that transportation and development decisions in the Washington, D.C. region, including the Maryland suburbs, accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

We want to express our opposition to the Special Exception request for the Costco automobile filling station – a large scale gas station which will attract vehicle trips from outside the local area. We believe this proposal is wholly inconsistent with the 2012 Wheaton CBD and Vicinity Sector Plan, and antithetical to the goal of promoting transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly development within one half mile of a Metro station. The Wheaton Sector Plan area not only offers high quality Metrorail service, but also extensive bus service and a planned rapid transit service. This concentration of transit services will increase the share of trips made by transit, encourage more walking, and reduce how much people drive in the area.

As a regional organization, we advocate for well-designed transit- and pedestrian-oriented development which focuses more housing and commercial activities within an easy walk of Metro stations and other high quality transit services and historic downtowns. We seek to mitigate existing automobile-oriented uses in transit districts, and prohibit new ones. Reducing auto-oriented uses and their impacts are important to fostering a public realm and private development that better cater to pedestrians rather than prioritize the movement of motor vehicles. Uses such as gas stations, automobile repair services, drive thrus, and similar uses that attract motor vehicular traffic and encourage automobile-oriented designs such as additional driveways, wider driveways, surface parking, and curb cuts should be minimized, reduced, and in some cases, prohibited in transit districts like the Wheaton Sector Plan area. The proposed, a high volume gas station, is an unnecessary new auto-oriented use that would detract from the county’s and our efforts to create a more pedestrian-friendly environment around the Metro station.

The Plan specifically identifies the existing “auto-oriented uses” of the area as one of the key issues to be addressed through the implementation of the Sector Plan. The addition of a large scale gas station would compound the “auto-oriented uses” problem identified in the Sector Plan. We recognize that the site of the gas station is on the outer part of the mall property and Plan boundary. Yet we find the proposed use not a neutral use related to our goals to improve the pedestrian environment, but rather a use that actively degrades the pedestrian environment and works against Sector Plan goals. With such a large scale gas station, additional vehicle trips will be attracted to the transit district from outside the local area simply for the purpose of refueling vehicles with cheaper gasoline. This regional automobile service use  contradicts the Sector Plan’s and our goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled. Introduction of a new large scale gas station would directly oppose the Plan’s guidance to:

“Provide better pedestrian connectivity and support safe, secure, and appealing street level activity” (p. 25)

In an area like the Wheaton Sector Plan area, we have often found that the transition from auto-oriented land uses take time, but can be phased in to create more transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly development. The Wheaton Sector Plan accommodates the existing auto-oriented regional mall surrounded by surface parking, but seeks to manage the negative impacts on pedestrians but proposing pedestrian access improvements, pedestrian-oriented street design changes, and encouragement of redevelopment to a more pedestrian-friendly design. Preventing new uses that would further degrade the transit district is also an important part of progressing towards a more pedestrian-friendly Wheaton Sector Plan and Metro station area. The large scale gas station would degrade the pedestrian environment by attracting additional automobile trips to the area and force more automobile-oriented designs for public rights-of-way to accommodate this auto-oriented use. Preventing this kind of use also promotes our overall goals to support greater use of transit, and build safe, walkable places, especially around major transit hubs.

For all of these reasons, the Coalition for Smarter Growth urges denial of the Special Exception application for the Costco automobile filling station.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

Activists say transit priority essential to traffic relief

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

As Montgomery County planners tweak wording in a draft transit master plan, some activists say prioritizing the 10 corridors and 79 miles of proposed future bus rapid transit is essential to easing traffic gridlock.

The county’s planning board on March 18 rejected the first draft of the Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan, sending it back to the staff to soften language and explain why the plan recommends giving transit priority over cars and drivers.

The planning board is scheduled to discuss the updated draft at 9 a.m. April 4.

Action Committee for Transit President Tina Slater expressed disappointment that debate over transit priority has delayed the plan’s progress, even if only for a few weeks.

Unlike the county’s Ride On bus system, which is mired in the same traffic that gridlocks cars, BRT will give residents an option they never have had before by moving riders more rapidly in dedicated lanes, she said.

The population of Montgomery is expected to increase by 205,759 people by 2040, according to a Montgomery County Demographic and Travel Forecast, based on a 2012 Metropolitan Washington Council of Government report. Slater questioned how even more residents will get around if the county does not prioritize transit.

“We are going to have a major transportation problem on our hands if we don’t do something now,” she said.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, saw the planning board’s delay as doing its homework to ensure the right routes and dedicated service are recommended.

However, Schwartz said his organization feels there are more corridors poised for dedicated lane service than the staff recommended.

During the discussion on March 18, Planning Commission Chairwoman Francoise M. Carrier said she quarreled with the plan’s “categorical statements that transit gets priority all the time everywhere.”

Carrier argued that any priority should be expressed in more nuanced language.

Acting Planning Director Rose Krasnow said that under the existing procedure, roads get priority, all the time, everywhere, which has greatly harmed the quality of life.

Planning Board Commissioner Casey Anderson cautioned watering down the language.

If the board were discussing a rail line, it would not debate whether it was fair to give it priority over other traffic, he said.

But both the problem and advantage of BRT is that it can operate in a myriad of ways — dedicated lanes, dedicated right-of-way, mixed in traffic, etc. — depending on where it is built.

“And that’s great because it’s very flexible,” Anderson said. “The problem is, whatever is in this plan then gets negotiated down from there. And so this is the high-water mark. If you don’t put it in the plan now, it’s not going to get better for transit, it’s only going to degrade.”

Dedicated lanes, signal priority and queue jumping are proven approaches to bus transit and are being implemented in Montgomery by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority with its MetroExtra limited stop bus service, Schwartz said.

About 700 people ride MetroExtra every day on its route on New Hampshire Avenue, and more routes are planned.

“There’s no better option to manage growth in traffic while maintaining economic competitiveness than investing in dedicated lane transit and transit-oriented communities,” Schwartz said.

Historically, the county approach to traffic congestion was to widen roads.

Yet, many routes proposed in the draft transit master plan cannot be widened, Slater said.

“The only thing you are left to do if the road is as wide as it is today, and you are trying to stuff more people down it, is to put people on something that can move more people than a car,” she said.

But to give BRT dedicated lanes north of the Beltway only to let it snarl in the urban traffic for fear that taking a lane could worsen congestion for the cars would defeat BRT’s purpose, she said.

Once built as planned, BRT will be its own advertisement, Slater said.

Drivers sitting in traffic who see buses bypassing the gridlock will consider taking a bus to get to their destination more quickly, she said.

Reduced from the 160-mile network of 20 corridors recommended last May by the Transit Task Force, planning staff have proposed a 79-mile network of 10 corridors, including U.S. 355 north and south, Georgia Avenue north and south, U.S. 29, Veirs Mill Road, Randolph Road, New Hampshire Avenue, University Boulevard and the North Bethesda Transitway.

Read the original article here >>

Smart growth key to Montgomery County’s future

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Montgomery County is implementing a Smart Growth Initiative to build on the area’s strengths in biotechnology and health care in a way that will create mixed-use neighborhoods and walkable new housing developments.

The three places where most of this new construction will occur are the Greater Seneca Science Corridor along Route 28, the White Oak Science Gateway west of Gaithersburg and the White Flint expansion along Rockville Pike. Each project possesses the core elements of walkability, rapid transit options and mixed-use development.

“Montgomery County has made it a point to invest in transit-oriented communities, and the most successful were Bethesda and Silver Spring. In the future, it will be Shady Grove, Rockville and White Flint,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

He said the market demand is very strong for development of mixed-use communities around transit. “It’s much stronger than for traditional suburban development,” he added.

Bonnie Casper, the 2012 president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, said smart growth is the next generation of development after the superfund trend, which involved taking contaminated sites and redeveloping them through mixed-use development to bring commercial and residential areas back to life.

“Smart growth is an extension of that, taking compact urban centers and turning them back into viable areas around transit nodes to avoid the sprawl,” she said. “More urbanized places like Bethesda, Rockville, Kensington, where the population has grown dramatically.”

The Montgomery County Planning Department’s website shows the Greater Seneca Science Corridor along Route 28 includes a major hospital, academic institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University, and private biotechnology companies. It will offer an array of services and amenities for residents, workers and visitors, including connecting destinations by paths and trails and providing opportunities for a range of outdoor experiences.

“There are 60,000 new jobs slated as part of the Shady Grove and Hopkins sites and new housing that will come into the area,” Casper said. “The key is the rapid transit system. It will cost $2 billion to expand the transit nodes to develop a 160-mile system of modern buses that look like subway cars.”

The White Flint project will enhance and expand development that has already occurred along Wisconsin Avenue and Rockville Pike.

“Retail and mixed business are already there, and it will be revamped into more of a mini town center,” Casper said. “There will be condos and townhomes of various sizes.”

The plan calls for 375-square-foot condos with Murphy beds that are the size of a hotel room.

“It’s based on the theory that younger or single people or oven older people will spend less time in their homes,” Casper said. “They will be in the local coffee shop, going to the movies and sitting out on the bench. Kids who have first jobs will be able to afford these.”

Bethesda is undergoing a huge expansion upward, she noted, and there is a tremendous amount of development to feed the needs of the area. A new Harris Teeter is going in, and Casper said it will have a very different look in the future.

Bordered by Route 29, Cherry Hill Road, New Hampshire Avenue and the Prince George’s County line, the White Oak Science Gateway is focused on developing options for a new research and technology node that capitalizes on the growing presence of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is complemented by mixed-use development.

“White Oak is where the FDA is, and it was developed a while ago,” Casper said. “That’s another area slated for expansion with additional research facilities and also commercial development — not just roads to jobs but mixed-use development.”

Schwartz and Casper agreed there is a critical need to fund Metro’s Purple Line to Silver Spring and Bethesda.

“We need to continue to fund the rehab of our Metro systems and to tie these traditional transit corridors to development,” Schwartz said. “The real news is that the Washington, D.C., region is beginning to lead the nation in offering effective alternatives and personal solutions to congestion — well-planned, walkable, and transit-oriented neighborhoods and centers.”

Read the original article here >>

Testimony to Ms. Lynn Robeson, Esq., Zoning Hearing Examiner Re: 4831 West Lane LLC, Local Map Amendment G-954 and Development Plan Amendment DPA 13-01

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Our organization works to ensure that transportation and development decisions in the Washington, D.C. region, including the Maryland suburbs, accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

We want to express our strong support for the West Lane multi-family residential project because it enhances the diversity of housing choices and number of MPDUs within such close proximity to the Bethesda Metro station. This is a great benefit to the county and the region because the building provides more housing, especially affordable housing, in a job-rich area, next to Metro. This reduces overall traffic in the region, shortens commutes, reduces household transportation costs, and gives more moderate income households access to the jobs and amenities of a highly desirable community.

After reviewing the proposed plans and public record, consulting with residents, and walking the site, we believe that the project offers its housing benefits through a sensitive and appropriate approach to the building design. The proposed building provides an attractive contribution to a pedestrian-oriented environment and complements the existing nearby residential buildings.

We are especially pleased to see the building’s relationship to Montgomery Lane which forms a supportive urban pedestrian environment. The existing and planned buildings along the north side of Montgomery Lane form a continuous street edge, which the proposed West Lane building completes. The 12 foot upper story setback provides visual interest to the building and addresses concerns of neighbors. A greater setback is not necessary or desirable. A greater setback will not further enhance the ground-level pedestrian environment. In addition, further unnecessary shrinkage of the building could threaten the number of MPDUs provided, while offering no increased public benefit.

The public use space provided at the corner of West Lane and Montgomery Lane is a good approach if it incorporates the main entrance of the building. The public use space at this location achieves two important objectives. It decreases the mass of the building by stepping back the building’s frontage, but still maintains the important building line along the street edge. It also provides a usable urban public space for people to wait or meet friends. The success of the public use space is dependent upon the entrance of the building opening up onto the public use space.

The appropriately scaled building and the well planned public use space are compatible with the neighborhood. The increased number of units ensures more pedestrians on the street – which is consistent with the Sector Plan and a benefit to all. The Sector Plan’s housing diversity goals are also furthered by the West Lane project. The proposed units are smaller and more affordable than those offered in surrounding buildings and include a substantial number of MPDUs – all within 950 feet of the Metro station.

For all of these reasons, the Coalition for Smarter Growth urges approval of the 4831 West Lane project.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

The Regional Medical Center belongs at a Metro Station

The Regional Medical Center belongs at a Metro Station

Posted on by Andrew Brown

All Prince George’s County residents have a vested interest in getting the decision right about where to locate and how to design the new county and state-supported $650 million Regional Medical Center with a workforce of more than 2000 employees. To leverage the most competitive healthcare benefits and economic development opportunities, we need state-of-the-art urban design at a Metro station.

Building a new Regional Medical Center at a Metro station means:

  • A regionally transit-connected center of medical excellence that can attract the best in class workforce using a walkable urban design that integrates into the surrounding context;
  • Less traffic, more access for workers, and more convenient access to quality healthcare for everyone, including individuals who must rely on transit;
  • Jumpstarting other quality mixed-use development, delivering a big economic boost for Prince George’s and the surrounding area.

Largo Town Center Metro station is the best option

  • Largo Metro has a vacant 20 acre site (old parcel D) just east of the entrance owned by PNG Schwartz that already has 1 million square feet approved for a federal HHS office building on just half of the site (Commons at Largo). 20 acres is plenty of room for a state-of-the-art hospital and medical office buildings. The 69-acre Boulevard at Capital Centre is on county owned land and could be part of a larger medical complex in the future.
  • Largo Metro station has ample vacant land, multiple roadway connections, rail & bus service, nearby retail, office and residential uses.
  • Combined with a pedestrian-friendly urban design, a hospital center could drive economic development as an anchor for a mixed-use destination and downtown district for Prince George’s.
  • The medical center can be sensitively located in the existing community around the Largo Town Center Metro station to manage traffic and ensure that existing residents will have improved access to the Metro, nearby services, offices, and new jobs.

Why the 2 non-Metro sites would be a major missed opportunity for the county

  • Both the Woodmore Towne Centre and the Landover Mall sites are located a mile and half from the closest Metro station – too far to walk & too far to leverage Metro access for more transit-oriented economic development.
  • Far from Metro, Woodmore Towne Centre is a sprawling 245-acre, automobile-oriented, outside-thebeltway greenfield site that hasn’t been able to attract the investment it promised.
  • Landover Mall needs reinvestment but its distance to a Metro station and lack of connectivity to a mixed-use district makes it a poor candidate for a competitive Regional Medical Center.
  • These sites would generate more traffic since it would be difficult for anyone to access the medical center without a car.

 

Coalition for Smarter Growth: Sign the petition & learn more at smartergrowth.net/PGmedicalcenter

Testimony before the Prince George’s County House Delegation in Support of PG 420-13: School Facilities Surcharge

Posted on by Andrew Brown

Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Our organization works to ensure that transportation and development decisions in the Washington, D.C. region, including the Maryland suburbs, accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

We urge you to support Bill PG 420-13 – School Facilities Surcharge, in order to take reasonable measures to catalyze transit-oriented development by removing unnecessary barriers to investment near transit stations. The bill lessens the burdens on multifamily housing construction near major transit stations which is exactly what is needed for Prince George’s to compete for the workforce and employers of the future.

Multifamily units, especially studio units, produce a fraction of the school-aged children that single family housing generates, thus the reduction in the school facilities surcharge will not overburden the county. It will, however, strengthen the tax base by attracting more of the largest segments of our population — young professionals and retirees seeking to live in a more urban, transit-accessible environment.

The recent assessment by the Prince George’s Planning Department in “Where and How We Grow Policy Paper,” urges the county to depart from its historic pattern as a spread out bedroom community. Instead, it urges the county to encourage development in Centers and the Developed Tier by reducing fees. It cites regional growth forecasts showing that economic development and workforce housing preferences will demand a major increase in multifamily housing near transit:

“[M]ore than 79 percent of units in the [County’s] pipeline are single-family detached units intended for the Developing Tier; however, to meet future demand, more than 60 percent of new housing units to be built should be multifamily units located in walkable communities at transit-accessible locations.

“Furthermore…between 2000 and 2010 Prince George’s County acquired one of the lowest numbers of new residents in the region. Without a recalibration of county priorities and policies that promote TOD and high-quality, mixed-use development, it is likely that the county will be at a continued disadvantage relative to its neighbors when it comes to attracting residents and employers who value the connectivity and amenities that other such communities provide.”

Again, we ask that you support Bill PG 420-13 – School Facilities Surcharge. Thank you for your consideration.

Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

Where will Prince George’s hospital go?

Posted on by acustis

Smart growth advocates have applauded Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III’s commitment to support new projects near the county’s 15 Metro stations, but as the county executive considers the best place to put a new $650 million regional hospital, he is making them nervous. Baker plans to hold a forum Feb. 28 at the Prince George’s Sports & Learning Complex to begin vetting four possible sites for the hospital. Two of them, the shuttered Landover Mall and the newly built Woodmore Town Centre, are nearly three miles from a Metro station in locations that require pedestrians to cross a Capital Beltway interchange. To the pro-transit crowd that has backed Baker as he presses the federal government on the importance of locating agencies near Metro stations, choosing either site would be a mistake.

Strategies Detailed to Remedy DC’s Affordable-Housing Crisis

Posted on by Joe Wisniewski

Lack of affordable housing is an unintended consequence of a region’s success, and can certainly be seen in the Washington D.C. metro area.

As the public demand for walkable neighborhoods has increased, low- to moderate-income residents are being priced out of those neighborhoods. And unfortunately, the public policy regarding housing affordability in the United States remains “drive until you qualify.”

Thus began Chris Leinberger of the Brookings Institution at a recent seminar entitled “Walkable Neighborhoods: How to Make Them for Everyone,” sponsored by the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The seminar also featured Ed Lazere of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and David Bowers of Enterprise Community Partners, who brought their own unique spins on the affordable-housing problem in D.C.

Lazere illuminated some startling statistics regarding housing affordability (D.C. lost half of its low-cost apartment rental units from 2000 to 2010). Bowers added the human element with stories of how housing affordability has affected some actual D.C. residents (illustrating his concept that “data without stories are just numbers”).

Leinberger pointed out that Hollywood does more market research than any other U.S. industry, crediting the popularity of television shows such as Seinfeld and Sex and the City supplanting that of, say, Leave it to Beaver, as reflecting the national consumer demand for walkable neighborhoods away from suburban forms of development which remained in demand until the mid-1990s.

The result of this increased demand has naturally been an increase in land values in walkable communities, specifically in D.C.’s 139 designated activity centers. This, coupled with the lesser issue of increased construction costs associated with the development of walkable neighborhoods, according to Leinberger, has led to gentrification.

Bowers pointed to D.C.’s U Street and H Street corridors as the city’s two most recent neighborhoods to undergo gentrification which, Leinberger stated, was either good or bad, depending on where you sit.

The side effect of gentrification, of course, is pricing out D.C.’s low- and moderate-income residents from these neighborhoods, often displacing long-time residents in the process. And where are they to go? Bowers pointed out that 20 percent of D.C. residents spend half of every take-home dollar on housing already. “They are drowning,” Bowers said.

The main solution to housing affordability in walkable urban places, Leinberger stated, is simply to create more walkable urban places. This is a recognition that housing affordability in in-demand neighborhoods is, by definition, a supply/demand problem.

Leinberger enumerated additional remedies, of which the following is a subset:

  1. Offering standard tax credit and vouchers from the local government in lieu of increased tax revenues from other parts of the walkable urban district;
  2. Participating in federal government programs associated with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhoods, the next generation of the department’s Hope VI programs;
  3. Instituting inclusionary zoning to require affordable units within a district with higher walkable urban infrastructure investment;
  4. Implementing fee capture upon resale of any market-rate unit within a district with such infrastructure investments;
  5. Allowing ancillary units in for-sale housing (i.e., “granny flats”) to expand the housing supply; and
  6. Encouraging employers to locate in transit-oriented developments in order to increase tax revenues in those districts.

These remedies are not just theoretical, but have been implemented in jurisdictions nationwide. Likewise, they are made possible based on increased profitability that does indeed occur in walkable neighborhoods.

Chris Leinberger dropped a staggering statistic regarding how much D.C. land values have increased in the past decade. On one particular site in Capitol Riverfront, he noted that the land value was probably at around $5 per square foot a decade ago. That same land was recently sold to Toll Brothers at a cost of $825 per square foot. “That increase is stunning,” he added.

In addition, in Arlington County, Virginia, the eight significant walkable neighborhoods occupying 10 percent of the county’s land today generates 55 percent of the county’s revenue, up from 20 percent just a few short decades ago. The county now captures part of this value growth by requiring that developers apportion a percentage of their residential units as affordable housing, or make a contribution to the county’s affordable housing fund.

While there is no one silver-bullet remedy, jurisdictions can, with perseverance, creativity, and hopefully a sense of urgency, address the “unintended consequence of success” that housing affordability poses as they create the walkable communities preferred by consumers of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Click here to read the original article from Mobility Lab. 

Photo courtesy of  Paul Goddin.

 

Hospital case studies point the way for Prince George’s

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

What’s the difference between a hospital that’s a springboard for economic development, and one that’s not living up to its potential? Answer: Design, location, and connectivity. Local groups compiled a set of case studies to point the way as Prince George’s County moves forward with its proposed Regional Medical Center.


Image from ZGF.The new hospital is an important healthcare facility for the county, and as an employer of 2,000 workers, it can also catalyze economic development in an area where new investment has lagged.

Hospital officials are rumored to be interested in a sprawling 80-120 acre suburban-style site away from Metro, likely the old Landover Mall site. The sponsors of the case studies hope that these examples of great hospitals, designed by leading architectural firms, can help decision-makers understand the benefits of a more mixed-use, compact and transit-oriented site.


Matrix of case studies. Click to view full size.Envision Prince George’s Community Action Team for Transit-Oriented Development, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and American Institute of Architects Potomac Valley collected the design case studies. They provide examples of mid- to large-scale hospitals with footprints of 1.5-48 acres. In fact, larger hospitals (measured in number of beds) are at the lower end of this range of acres, while the smaller hospitals tended to occupy more land area.

While Prince George’s continues to pursue additional federal offices (like the new FBI headquarters), a new $600 million medical center could be one of the best opportunities to jump-start transit-oriented development at one of the county’s 15 underutilized Metro stations.

In contrast to courting federal agencies, the state and county control the decision about where to locate and how to design a new medical center. Not encumbered with stringent federal security requirements, a regional medical center offers a better opportunity to connect to surrounding uses and fuel spinoff economic activity than an FBI or Homeland Security building.

Why a smaller, urban footprint?

Hospitals must plan for growth, and a working “rule of thumb” for traditional suburban or rural 200-bed hospitals (similar in size to the Prince George’s facility) is a minimum of 40 acres. This footprint provides a suburban or rural site with room for the initial building, associated drop-offs, parking, and room for future growth. Growth is common in medical facilities, whether for outpatient clinics, specialty centers, or the hospital itself.


Seattle Children’s Hospital. Photo from ZGF.Hospitals in a more urban context plan for similar growth, but within sites that are typically 10 acres or less. This smaller footprint offers several benefits over a suburban medical campus. Connecting a hospital center to a larger mixed-use environment where people can work, shop, and live helps attract and retain highly sought-after skilled healthcare workers. By better integrating into the surrounding community, an anchor institution like this can support a vibrant, walkable, thriving new hub.

Designers also point to sustainability benefits from a more urban design and context. A limited footprint disturbs less land and reduces the heat island effect. Placing a more compact medical center in an urban hub also allows for more environmentally-friendly transportation choices with frequent transit service, and walk and bicycle options for short trips. Driving and parking will remain an important mode of access, but a more urban hospital allows for lower parking supplies, greater access for those who do not have a car, and the choice to take some trips on foot or by bicycle.

While a footprint of 10 acres may seem small compared to a suburban campus of 40 acres or more, hospital complexes around the country and beyond are developing successful, busy hospitals on sites as small as a few acres.

The just-released case studies of 11 successful moderate to small-footprint hospitals of comparable size to the planned Prince George’s regional medical center share 3 common success factors: access, flexibility for future growth, and a connection to the surrounding environment.

Success factor: Access

An important factor for any healthcare facility is convenient and easy access to and from the site. High-quality public transportation, stores and services, and housing within walking distance create opportunities for staff and visitors to get outside the hospital while still being nearby, and enable some to come and go without having a car.


Access to Champ de Mars medical center. Image from CannonDesign.Several of the examples in the report show major hospitals that are integrated into city blocks. Hospital staff and visitors have easy access to a local services and transit options. For example, the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center is a 448-bed hospital, 7 stories tall situated on 3 acres of land. Within a block is the Red line light rail station and major bus routes.


GWU hospital entrance. Photo from Smithgroup JJR.Closer to home, the 6-7 story, 371-bed George Washington University Hospital occupies 2 acres. The front door of GWU Hospital opens onto the busy entrance of the Foggy Bottom Metrorail station and is embedded in a thriving urban district that mixes health, university, private office, retail and housing uses in a highly walkable, transit-accessible environment.

Medical facilities woven into the fabric of a larger mixed-use district served by transit can have an advantage when competing for medical professionals who desire to be in a lively, diverse place, and need flexibility with their commutes in a two-worker household.

Success factor: Flexibility for future growth

While suburban hospitals are typically designed with extra acreage to accommodate future growth, urban medical centers can anticipate similar growth, but plan smartly within a more constrained footprint.


Main entrance, American Hospital Dubai. Image from AECOM.Planning a smaller-footprint facility guides planners to take into account their overall surroundings, making better use of pedestrian connections to the surrounding community and supporting services. In the case of both the vertical high rise addition to Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, with the 260-bed Bunting Center inpatient hospital on 1.5 acres, and the 350-bed American Hospital Dubai campus on 11 acres, planning for growth accounted for the sites’ larger surroundings.

The hospital designers from AECOM point out that an urban design and location provides significant advantages in offering the ability to walk to a nearby restaurant to avoid yet another meal at the hospital cafeteria or the convenience of staying at a nearby hotel for someone visiting a sick relative.

Success factor: Connection to green spaces

Numerous studies show that access to outdoor places and views of green spaces create a state-of-the-art healing environment. But urban hospitals don’t need to concede healing green features to their suburban and rural counterparts. Roof gardens, courtyards, and natural light are all achievable in small-footprint hospital centers.


Roof garden view, Bunting Center at Mercy, Baltimore. Rendering from AECOM.The centerpiece of the Bunting Center at Mercy Hospital healing environment is a multilevel roof garden, accessible on various floors and overlooked by room occupants above the midway point along the rise of the building. The 9th floor garden offers direct access from the ICU waiting room.

On the 28 acre campus of the 600-bed Seattle Children’s Hospital, 41% of the campus is dedicated as open space. Pedestrian paths are provided throughout the facility to promote walking and offer outdoor connections.

Innovative design and urban context show the possibilities

The 11 case studies offer examples of innovative architectural design, connectivity to the surrounding context, access to transit, green features and compact footprints. These features highlight how a regional medical center for Prince George’s and Southern Maryland could establish a new leading healthcare facility that not only attracts the staff and patients it needs to succeed, but fits into a larger district that thrives on the influx of activity.

Photos courtesy of Greater Greater Washington. Read the original article here.