A new Metro station that civic and business leaders say they are counting on as the economic centerpiece for Alexandria’s future will open May 19, officials announced Wednesday, after nearly a year of delays caused by permitting, labor and supply issues.
The Potomac Yard station is on the site of a former rail yard south of Reagan National Airport next to several rising office buildings, including a new satellite campus for Virginia Tech. The $370 million station will be Metro’s 98th — and the seventh to open since November — serving the Yellow and Blue lines north of the Braddock Road station.
Metro General Manager Randy Clarke and Alexandria Mayor Justin M. Wilson (D) announced the opening date during a media tour of the new station, which will be the fourth in the city.
“The only reason we’re standing here is because our community never gave up on this project,” Wilson said. “And our community has been pushing for this station for a generation and beyond.”
The opening will be the latest growth indicator for a transit system that has expanded its regional footprint and ridership levels in recent months while emerging from the pandemic and a train shortage. The station is also a key component of Alexandria’s efforts to remake the 295-acre former railroad yard site into a bustling urban center.
The station’s initial planned opening date of April 2022 was pushed to the summer. In July, Metro announced the station’s automatic train control system needed to be redesigned after it didn’t meet requirements. Then a planned fall opening was postponed after crews ran into problems with soil and other issues.
Wilson had publicly expressed frustration over the delays, calling the last one a “gut punch” and saying his feelings were compounded by three years of service issues or construction projects that had limited Metro service in the city. The service reductions included lower rail frequencies during the pandemic and two rounds of station shutdowns, with a six-week closure of six stations south of the airport last fall that required an eight-month shutdown of the Yellow Line. Service on the line will resume days before Potomac Yard’s opening.
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“It has been a long time,” Wilson said. “Commuters of Alexandria have really taken it on the chin for a while, and so we’re excited that not only is this station opening, but the Yellow Line’s coming back.”
As Wilson spoke Wednesday, contractors continued to work all around, unveiling signs while installing dashboards and communications equipment inside the station manager’s office between the still-boxed-up fare gates.
The project is being built by Potomac Yard Constructors, a joint venture of Halmar International and Schiavone Construction Co., two global construction companies. Alexandria, along with other government and private partners, is funding the station’s construction.
Much of the delay originated from an assortment of issues that emerged from the pandemic, including a labor shortage that also affected construction work and supply chain issues, said Andy Off, Metro’s chief infrastructure officer. The project also had a more complex permitting process than other stations, having to conform to the likings of the National Park Service, freight railroad CSX and a special architectural review because it lies in a historic district.
The Park Service limits construction along the George Washington Memorial Parkway, so the agency wanted to hide the station as much as possible from the scenic roadway. Metro used balloons to test what heights could be visible from the parkway before construction. Paint that covers the beams on the station’s exterior were found to match best with the surrounding trees during all four seasons.
“If you look at the exterior, you can see the brown beams look like trees,” said Fred Robertson, Metro’s senior program manager for the station project.
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Lights, meanwhile, were pointed so that they don’t bleed into nearby forested areas. The project also required the creation of Alexandria’s largest wetlands restoration project.
Since railroad tracks run under the station’s pedestrian walkway, Metro worked with CSX to ensure all types of trains and freight could pass.
To help satisfy Alexandria’s architectural review, Metro chose a station design inspired by the Thorncrown Chapel in Arkansas, a 48-foot gothic-like structure seemingly enclosed by glass. The chapel includes 6,000 square feet of glass in the form of 425 windows.
The Potomac Yard station includes roofs and walls of paneled glass in rectangles, loosely evoking the square-shaped concrete panels that line Metro’s Brutalist-inspired ceilings at many underground stations.
“When you look at the pictures of that chapel, you’ll draw comparison to all the natural light that draws into the station,” said Diana Levy, Metro’s director of new construction. “It’s beautiful and it really, really resonates with where we are.”
As Wilson toured the station, he looked out at giant panes of glass at new offices, classrooms and apartments under construction. He said the station’s economic effects could be similar to growth that occurred around the District’s NoMa station, which also sits adjacent to railroad tracks and was an infill project.
“The commercial growth that’s occurring in this region is occurring within a couple of feet of Metro,” Wilson said. “It is a proven economic development engine across the region.”
Outside the station, more than 550,000 square feet of commercial space already has been built, including a 100,000-square-foot center for the National Industries for the Blind and a $70 million headquarters building for the American Physical Therapy Association.
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Projects under construction include the $1 billion Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, an Inova medical center that will include a full-service emergency room, a family medicine center and medical offices. Another project will include 577 apartments, 84 townhouses and 55,000 square feet of retail space, said Liz Bolton, spokesperson for the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership.
“All of this development is 100 percent attributed to the promise of Metro,” Bolton wrote in an email.
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