Transportation Update - New Renderings!
Welcome back to the Quartz District discussion on coUrbanize!
While we apologize for how long it has been since our last post, we are extremely pleased with the progress we have made over the past year and a half. We are excited to continue with regular updates and news about the project and our progress towards bringing Quartz District to life. The focus of this update will be transportation, and our next update will focus on the updated concept plan for Quartz District.
As you may recall, we submitted the initial Quartz District rezoning application early in order to introduce the vision and potential for the project concurrently with the Dale City Small Area Plan process. Our initial intent was to continue with the second submission of the rezoning in early 2020, immediately upon the adoption the Small Area Plan by Prince William County.
However, in 2019 Prince William County decided to pursue an interchange initiative for the Prince William Parkway and Minnieville Road intersection instead of the quadrant road solution that was envisioned as a part of the initial Quartz District concept plans. As a result, we conducted a search for the best type of interchange concept to facilitate the vision for, and success of, Quartz District. The perfect example was found in Charlottesville, VA with the recently constructed grade separated intersection at Route 29 and Rio Road. This exact type of intersection improvement was included in the County Transportation Bond Referendum that voters approved overwhelmingly in November 2019.
Since that time we have been working to accommodate the grade separated intersection concept into the overall Quartz District vision and we believe this has resulted in a better plan and ultimately a better project. In addition to the planning process, we have advanced considerable preliminary engineering design work and approval processes to facilitate both time and cost savings of the redesigned Prince William Parkway/Minnieville intersection. A critical component of this effort has been focused on identifying and maintaining the critical access points into, and visibility of, the project with the new intersection. Direct access and visibility are vital to bringing the top flight retailers, restaurants and amenities to Quartz District.
There continues to be strong market interest in Quartz District and we are pleased to say that we are currently working with a great anchor tenant and hope to announce a signed lease soon. The important first step to bringing this anchor, and interested restaurants and retailers, into the project was to educate them about the planned intersection and access into the project. For this, we prepared a graphic model and renderings to show how the ultimate intersection will work. The images found at the link below show the concept for the intersection which will ultimately allow the north/south traffic on Prince William Parkway to move freely beneath an elevated Minnieville Road where all of the other turning movements will occur. This will allow this currently failing intersection to operate at acceptable levels.
While we have made significant progress on the transportation front, there are still critical issues related to project access that must be resolved in order to meet the lease requirements of retailers and allow Quartz District to reach its full potential. Stay tuned for an update on our new concept plan for the project.
Click here to view the new Quartz District Views & Renderings
