Walking Around Town: Big Stuff in Ballston

Map It:  Ballston 

WHEN DISTRICT DWELLERS hear the word Ballston, they may feel a sense of revulsion. To them, it's one of those Metrorail stations "out there" with a soulless high-rise core rising around it. They may have been there before and fear the towering blocks immediately surrounding its station at Stuart Street and Fairfax Drive. While the photo we've put up here might reinforce that image, there is actually quite a bit happening around this dense commercial center in western Arlington County. Situated between the region's two biggest employment centers (the District's central business district and Fairfax County's Tysons Corner), in theory, it is easily accessible by car and by Metro's Orange Line. Because of that, Ballston has seen an explosion of growth in residential, commercial and mixed-use development. Block by block, Ballston the Behemoth is filling in and growing up.

We swung by over the lunch hour and we've put together an interactive Wayfaring map to help you follow along. Check out the full tour after the jump.

When you look at any Google-based satellite map of Ballston, you must remember that they're woefully out of date. Much of the old Ballston, with its surface parking lots, can be seen here. What aren't seen is all the construction cranes, most of them on the periphery of the core surrounding the Metrorail station on Fairfax Drive. Walking east on Fairfax Drive, you'll see two landmarks of Ballston's former identity as a suburban outpost of Arlington County: the International House of Pancakes and Carpool.

Both sites are surrounded by towering office blocks, condos and other mixed-used buildings. News broke this month that Carpool, the bar loved by many an Arlingtonian, will be shutting its doors, perhaps as early as fall 2007. It will be torn down to make way for condos. As for the IHOP, it is a symbol of when Ballston was a more working-class, suburban area. Although it seems to have a pretty good stream of business, right next door in an adjacent office building is a sleek, bright restaurant called Caribbean Breeze, which specializes in "Nuevo Latino" cuisine. Want to take bets on which might outlast the other? As Ballston becomes more dense, its parking lot might be too valuable to not sell to developers. A fusion Indian restaurant might fit in well there. No? Maybe a Front Page ... wait there's already one on Wilson Boulevard.

Walking south on Quincy Street toward the Harris Teeter on Glebe Road, you're going by one of biggest things to come in Ballston in a long time. On top of the parking garage for the massive Ballston Common Mall complex, the Arlington Ice Skating Center is currently under construction. This blogger thinks that its a valuable use of space and could turn into a huge sporting draw, although it'd be even better if the Capitals — who will be using the ice center as a practice facility — were any good.

Route 120, better known as Glebe Road, isn't really a pedestrian-friendly road. With six lanes of quickly moving traffic, it looks more like Southern California than Virginia, but between Wilson Boulevard and Fairfax Drive, the busy road runs through the newest hub of construction, the multi-building Arlington Gateway office complex.

JBG Cos. is building up the western end of Ballston and the landmark Bob Peck's Chevrolet car dealership, in the foreground, is the developer's next conquest. The distinctive 1960s-era showroom will be torn down and replaced with a 12-story building.

This end of Ballston has been seeing so much new construction that Arlington County has plans to expand the Metrorail station and add a new entrance closer to Glebe Road. Building new Metrorail entrances is no easy task. So you know that when a area is getting one, there will be a considerable need. With Ballston growing at every corner, it's quite necessary.

Photos by Michael Grass/Express