In the Center of It All

"Everything revolves around traffic here," said Ringo Lanzetti, 35, an entrepreneur who leaves the gated comfort of the Rotunda, a complex of condominium towers on Greensboro Drive, and gets on the Beltway for his daily commute to Alexandria.

"But if you're living in it, it's not that bad," he said. "You're going out when most people are trying to get in, and vice versa." Seven years ago, Lanzetti moved to Tysons from Centreville in desperation: His commute to a job there was twisting him into a ball of stress. "That was how emotionally damaged I was by traffic."

As a traffic engineer, Kevin Fellin knows from gridlock. He simplified his life three years ago, investing in a one-bedroom condominium in the Fountains, a rental conversion on Jones Branch Drive. Last summer he traded up, for two bedrooms on the 10th floor of the Rotunda, and his commute to Wells & Associates turned into a walk across the street. Fellin, 30, has re-created a ritual of his childhood in southwestern Virginia, where life's a lot simpler: He goes home for lunch.

"I can run home, do errands and still eat lunch," he said. "I'd rather be close to work than be close to a grocery store."

Tysons residents do not have a Tysons mailing address. But they have secret rituals, like morning trips to an empty Nordstrom, tennis matches and jogs after work and the ease of running errands once the office workers and their cars have cleared out. They can cool off in pools in their developments or relax in saunas. And they can hear the birds sing, because although there may not be a park, there are trees.

"On the weekends, you feel like Tysons Corner belongs to you," Fellin said. But when Christmas shoppers invade after Thanksgiving, the residents flee.

And they drive just about everywhere, even two blocks to the video store on Route 7. Their car dependence concerns those who note that more condominiums will arrive way before Metro does, and even then, there's no guarantee that people will get out of their cars.

For now, the roads are too wide, the sidewalks too disconnected, their car habits too ingrained.

"I could walk," said Michael Lewis, a new resident of Avalon Crescent down the street from Lillian Court. "I've never done it."

Lewis, a former president of the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, lived in a house in Oakton for 16 years before a divorce led him to smaller quarters in a condominium. He acknowledges that his management consulting office is less than a half-mile away. But he says he won't ride the train when it comes.

Back in the late 1970s, Tysons was a frontier for a small number of buyers who sought apartment living in Fairfax. There wasn't much. As those residents retire, buyers such as Fellin are changing the feel of older communities like the Rotunda, which now schedules pickup basketball games after work.

Newer developers are going after buyers with money. "Elevated Standards. Elevated Status" is the Mayhood Co.'s pitch to buyers in Park Crest, the first of West Group's residential towers to go on the market. The condominiums will be "simply Above All Else in height, service and design." And priced accordingly, from the "$400s" to $2 million. The Reserve off Gallows Road is marketing million-dollar townhouses.