In the Center of It All

Park Crest's ground floor will feature a Harris Teeter supermarket, county officials say, a welcome addition to the 35-year-old Safeway that is one-third the size across the Beltway toward McLean.

Tysons is becoming more of a 24-hour place where workers crowd into happy hours at Chili's and On the Border. Five restaurants, a food court and a 16-screen movie theater are scheduled to open in Tysons Corner Center in September. The owner of Tysons II has promised to build a park with an amphitheater as it expands the mall with a complex of condos, offices and stores.

"The most-asked questions I've had are, when is the residential component going to be available and how do I get on the list?" Anthony Calabrese, an attorney for Tysons Corner Center, said of that mall's plans for a massive expansion that will include 1,250 condominiums.

The Sport and Health Club on Greensboro Drive, surrounded by office buildings, counts corporate members as 70 percent of its market. But that's changing, with a Caribbean pool party at the club in June and a barbecue and wine-tasting this month, all advertised through a singles group.

"What we're trying to do is become more of a social center and attract the people who live in the area," manager Mark Pooley said. "It's a young demographic."

Not entirely. Just behind the Shell station, 7-Eleven, Subaru dealership, Staples, Panera bakery and Radio Shack on a strip of Route 7 near the Beltway, Christina Galdames and her husband sip coffee in the rhododendron garden behind their townhouse in Amberwood. They love the convenience of retirement in Tysons.

"It's ugly, but at the same time, we live close to the chaos but we are not there," said Galdames, 60, who retired this year from the Organization of American States. "To tell you the truth, it doesn't bother me."

Before she goes out to run errands, she looks out her bedroom window and assesses the traffic flow on Route 7, then walks down Gosnell Drive to the highway, where there are no sidewalks. "I don't go out until the traffic is clear," she said. "Then I run between the stores."