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CRYSTAL CLEAR

Redevelopment brings D.C.’s underground ‘city of the future’ out of the dark

BY BARBARA De LOLLIS

Crystal City, a 150-acre office and residential development just outside Washington, D.C., was a classic 1960s brave new world of concrete and glass, replete with store-lined underground pedestrian passages and a skywalk. But time and changing tastes overtook that particular vision of the future (21st-century man, it turns out, has much more old-fashioned tastes), and the development’s owner got busy adding Main Street shopping.

Arlington, Va.-based Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty, which owns 70 percent of Crystal City’s office buildings, says the $40 million retail expansion, completed last fall, has restored the human scale to Crystal City and made it more competitive with other centers nearby. For the first time, street-front retail is up on Crystal Drive; before this, no stores were visible from the street.

Crystal City comprises about 10,000 residential units, 5,500 hotel rooms, 10 million square feet of office space and about 500,000 square feet of retail space. Some 60,000 people live or work there. Before the renovation, though, “you’d never know it, because the residents and workers never went outside,” said David Kitchens, principal architect at Cooper Carry, the Atlanta-based firm that designed the makeover.

Smith, the property’s original developer, began building the complex at a time when many people’s vision of the future resembled something out of The Jetsons, the animated TV cartoon series in which the characters used personal spacecraft to reach their destinations without going outside. Crystal City contained a network of underground, climate-controlled tunnels and a covered sky bridge that allowed people to walk to their offices, homes, parking, retail and mass transit stations without ever coming out into the open.

Today, though, the shopper’s desire for insulation has given way to an affinity for outdoor, Main Street-style retail, says Henry Fonvielle, the Smith senior vice president of retail leasing who spearheaded Crystal City’s retail revival. “People have obviously voted with their dollars that they really enjoy a more traditional streetscape feel,” he said.

Crystal City sits across the Potomac River from and west of downtown Washington, and next to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Rents in Crystal City’s apartments often top $3,000, condominiums can sell for more than $1 million. The average household income within a one-mile radius of Crystal City is nearly $80,000 a year.

When a large office tenant announced plans to move out four years ago, Smith saw an opportunity to launch a renovation and attract a more diverse tenant base.

The highest-profile changes affected a three-block portion of Crystal Drive. Once a nondescript, three-lane street, Crystal Drive has become the project’s Main Street. The development team replaced several parking structures with 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurants and put up street parking. Store heights were staggered to maintain the retailers’ individuality, with the tallest buildings, on the corners, reserved for restaurant anchors.

Previously, Crystal City’s practical mix of banks, nail salons, boutiques and gift shops served mainly the daytime office population, Fonvielle says. Its transformation was designed to lure workers and residents alike through happy hours, fine dining and special events.

Crystal City’s blocks stretched nearly twice as long as normal city blocks. To break them up, the team pruned back the landscaped parks in front of the office buildings to uncover the entrances and better integrate the parks into the streetscape.

Crystal City’s problems went beyond the merely aesthetic, though. Traffic tended to move pretty fast, but a scarcity of traffic signals and crosswalks made life hard for drivers and pedestrians alike. Furthermore, the buildings had names that were easily mistaken for each other, such as Crystal Plaza and Crystal Square, recalls David Houck, local manager at the Washington office of Addison, Texas-based real estate firm The Staubach Co. Now those streets have been reconfigured, and signs and directories provide clear directions to parking and shops.

The renovation sparked the interest of local restaurateurs. Last October Washington-based Proximo Restaurants opened two restaurants at Crystal City: Oyamel, a new concept offering Mexican appetizers, and Jaleo, a popular Spanish tapas chain. The average check at these restaurants is about $22.

A few years ago Proximo would not have considered opening a restaurant in Crystal City, says Roberto Alvarez, a company partner. “It’s only when I heard in detail the changes they were proposing in terms of building this Main Street and changing the traffic patterns that I got interested,” Alvarez said. Smith offered incentives, too, though Fonvielle declined to describe them.

Since then, Caribou Coffee, Cold Stone Creamery and an Irish sports bar have opened in Crystal City. Upscale seafood chain McCormick & Schmick’s joins Jaleo and Oyamel as an anchor, and so will a Corner Bakery Café scheduled to open this year. Also opening this year are a Thai restaurant and Ted’s Montana Grill (CNN founder Ted Turner’s chain).

Providing better shopping and dining and revamping the street design has had a profound effect, making Crystal City more marketable to office tenants. “Tenants and brokers are looking at Crystal City in a whole new light. Instead of having well-hidden retailers, Crystal Drive is alive with activity,” Houck said.

The firm also says it aims to entice people out to the street with more retail this year. A wine and cheese store is to open, and the leasing team is looking to put in a small, possibly organic, grocery store, with meat and produce departments, Fonvielle says. “There are a lot of people who live in Crystal City who literally do all their shopping here,” he said.

Smith expects its existing retailers, which include a Safeway supermarket, sundry shops, drugstores, beauty salons and jewelry stores, to prosper with the changes.

But Smith still has to lure some people out of those underground tunnels, which allow them to bypass the new outdoor retail, says Alvarez. The tunnels continue to offer a convenient option in the rain and snow, of course.

For its part, Smith is confident that its street-front retail will bring people back to the surface. That, after all, is where the modern shopper likes to be: out in the open.