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Waves Across the River From National Harbor
The view of the future is clear from Alexandria's waterfront. If finished as planned, National Harbor will include a convention center, 4,000 hotel rooms, shopping, restaurants and entertainment.
(By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)
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Macdonald said that the city "is doing more or less the right thing" in preparing for the project and that "we should try to take advantage of it." But, he said, city officials should be "a little more calm and collected."
"Alexandria tends to get into a tizzy about everything," Macdonald said. "They just seem to be stressing about this a little more than they should."
Jinks acknowledged that the city's excitement about the project is tinged with concern that the development will compete with the city for smaller business meetings and patrons who now go to Old Town but may choose to eat dinner or shop in Maryland. "We're going to have to work harder to keep the business that we have," he said.
But Alexandria officials are convinced that National Harbor will help the city overall, although no estimates of the economic effect are available. "We are looking at this as another asset, something else to bring people into our region," Mitchell said. "We know that once people see Alexandria, they come back."
National Harbor is a longtime dream of Fairfax-based developer Milton V. Peterson, who purchased the property in 1996. Past attempts to build on the Prince George's banks of the Potomac had failed. In 1987, a developer broke ground for Port America, a 52-story office tower that would have overlooked the river, but the property was foreclosed on in the 1990s.
Peterson fought off lawsuits and criticism from neighborhood residents worried about traffic problems and development experts concerned that the Washington area is saturated with hotels and convention centers. After a nearly decade-long debate, construction began on the 300-acre site in late 2004.
The first phase, scheduled to open around April 1, 2008, will include five hotels and the project's centerpiece: the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, which will have 2,000 rooms. Other phases will be unveiled over the next decade.
Kent Digby, National Harbor's vice president and director of operations, said he welcomes Alexandria's preparations and hopes to work in partnership with the city. A "fact sheet" that National Harbor has distributed talks about an 18-story atrium in the Gaylord Center "with views of the Potomac River and Old Town Alexandria."
"I really do not see it as competition," he said. "I see it as synergistic. The entire area is going to benefit."
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