Disappearing Triangle

The tired face of Triangle along U.S. 1 is disappearing, and disappearing for good.

Over the last few months, Prince William County has razed eight of the 80 parcels of land be-tween Joplin and Bradys Hill roads.

The building that housed the iconic Globe and Laurel restaurant since 1975 was recently leveled. All that's left is newly spread grass, seed and straw.

The same fate awaits the 40-year-old Best Value Inn on the corner of Joplin Road and U.S. 1 in November, as well as all the rest of the restaurants, gas stations and automotive businesses scattered along the four-lane strip.

Prince William County is buying up the property on either side of U.S. 1 as part of a widening and revitalization project for the area outside the front gate of the Quantico Marine Corps base.

The results will be dramatic, county

officials say. Their vision would get rid of an eyesore and create a village reminiscent of Occo-quan. County leaders say they hope the transformation will inspire property owners and develop-ers to breathe new life into old Triangle.

"When people start to see the buildings coming down and we actually start building the road, people are going to start thinking about the area differently," said Pat Thomas, a county planner who heads up "Potomac Communities," the county's revitaliza-tion plan for U.S. 1.

"Part of the problem with revitalization and redevelopment is that we've talked about it and the widening for so long," Thomas said.

While it took the Virginia Department of Transportation 12 years to do the study of the U.S. 1 corridor, it first identified the need to widen the road in 1975, Thomas said.

The county decided in recent years to take on portions of the widening project instead of waiting any longer for the state.

"People have been saying, 'Yes, yes, yes, you say you are going to do it but we don't believe it will ever happen,'" Thomas said. "It's very hard when you are on the corridor every day, the way it looks is somehow ingrained and you can't imagine it looking any differently until someone starts doing some-thing."

It's already beginning to look different.

"The buildings come down quickly once you start the actual demolition," said Tom Blaser, director of the county department of transportation. "We would like to have them all down by early next spring."

The next step will be to put all the utilities underground. That should take about nine months or so. Then, the road widening project will get under way. That's expected to take about a year, so Blaser estimates that the project will be complete in 2011.

"We've built a lot of road here in Prince William over the last 20 years, but this one is a big job," Blaser said, because of the number and different types of properties the county has to acquire and then tear down.

The cost of the land acquisition is estimated at $30 million; relocating the utilities, $10 million; and the road construction between $10 million and $12 million. The project is being paid through road bonds that were approved by voters.

"The county has put a tremendous investment into this," said Prince William Super-visor Maureen Caddigan, R-Dumfries. "When developers see the buildings are already down and the road is widened, they are going to want to come. But, we don't want just anything.

"We have a vision. It's not going to be the same old, same old."

And that vision is to turn a roughly six-block area off U.S. 1 into the "Village of Trian-gle." The area is bordered by Old Triangle Road, Amidon Avenue, Squire Lane, Triangle Street, Post Street and parts of Fuller Heights Road.

"Think of Occoquan and that's what we want to duplicate—a mix of neighborhood commercial uses, small multi-family houses and single families interspersed—the way small towns used to be," Thomas said. "You want variety."

The Triangle project is one of three areas along the U.S. 1 corridor earmarked for revitalization as part of the Potomac Communities plan. They are at different stages of development. The Triangle road project is the first undertaken, Caddigan said, in part, due to its location near the new Na-tional Museum of the Marine Corps that has drawn more than 1 million visitors since it opened two years ago.

And those museum visitors had been great for business at the Best Value Inn, said then-manager Fer Jadean last fall.

"A lot of military people were coming in every week," Jadean said. "Sometimes we were booked up.

"The area outside of the Marine Corps base has looked that way forever and it's not very pretty," Caddigan said. "We have pride in Prince William County and we would like to see restaurants, hotels in the areas to accommodate the museum visitors."

For the "Village of Triangle" concept to work, the property owners will need to buy into it. Town hall meetings have been held and information has been given to the property own-ers, and as part of that they've been asked to participate in a service district.

As part of a service district, the property owners would pay "a few additional pen-nies" more in property taxes for sidewalks, street lights and road widening, Thomas said.

"Mainly, it would make the village more pedestrian-friendly," Thomas said. "We are hoping to take advantage of the million people who are coming to the museum with restaurants and small shops."

In the past, county staff hadn't had much luck convincing Triangle property owners of the merits of the service district, but Thomas said she hopes that will soon change.

"We are hearing rumblings again, now that the buildings are coming down, from some property owners who are trying to revitalize the service district idea," Thomas said.

For the service district to be established, about 60 to 70 percent of the property owners will need to petition the county, Thomas said.

"At this point, we don't have enough support from the individual property owners. A lot of them are absentee owners and a lot of the properties are rental."

County staff is planning another meeting with Triangle property owners to explain the U.S. 1 widening project and also in the hopes of generating more interest in the village concept.

"This is a slow process but once you see things change, it starts to snowball. Once you get the first person to put in a restaurant or a shop, people begin to think differently about their prop-erties," Thomas said. "It really does take that first person going in and being that risky person."

"I think in 10 years it will be dramatically different. I am hoping it will be a lot sooner," Thomas said. "The road alone will make a difference. The utilities being underground will make a tremendous difference."

"We get to build off the tremendous amount of interest in the museum and it just keeps growing daily. We want to capture that market," Thomas said. "We're building roads not to just build roads. It's an investment and I want this investment to capture sales taxes and real estate taxes."

Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-878-8010.