Waves Across the River From National Harbor
With a Water Taxi and Metro Access, Alexandria Hopes to Attract Visitors

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 22, 2007

The massive National Harbor waterfront development under construction across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Maryland presents a unique set of challenges to Alexandria officials.

When completed, the $2 billion project will include 4,000 hotel rooms -- equivalent to Alexandria's entire stock -- along with 1 million square feet of retail, dining and entertainment space and the largest non-gaming hotel and convention center on the Eastern Seaboard.

The dilemma for Alexandria officials: Do they view this as a battle between the states or try to get their piece of the tourism action?

"This could either be a great opportunity or a huge competitive challenge, and I think it's to the city's credit that they stood up and said, 'Okay, how can we make this work for us?' " said Jo Anne Mitchell, president and chief executive of the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association.

City officials, choosing the collaborative approach, are busy getting ready for the spring 2008 opening of the long-debated and much-anticipated National Harbor. Alexandria hotels are already getting overflow bookings from National Harbor conventioneers, and the city expects the development will bring an additional 500 to 1,000 people a day into Old Town to eat, shop and sightsee.

To prepare, the City Council recently approved a plan for a water taxi to ferry people from National Harbor in Oxon Hill to the city dock behind the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Starting in spring 2008, the taxi is to run every half-hour, 12 hours a day. The service will be run by Potomac Riverboat Co., which operates water taxis to Georgetown and Mount Vernon. It's not known how much the 20-minute ride to National Harbor will cost, but the adult round-trip fare between Alexandria and Georgetown is $22.

"To us, this is a whole new gateway to Alexandria," said Charlotte Hall, the riverboat company's vice president and a past president of the Old Town Business Association. "Think about all the people who will now be coming here by water. It's a great opportunity."

The city is encouraging Old Town business owners to greet the visitors with improved facilities, signs and entryways. "Company is coming, and just like at home, when company comes, you spruce up the house a little bit better," said Deputy City Manager Mark Jinks.

Jinks and other city officials recently walked the length of King Street in the Old Town area, identifying buildings that need improvements such as fresh paint, and notified the owners. The city's proposed fiscal 2008 budget contains $100,000 for National Harbor-related improvements such as increased sidewalk cleaning near the waterfront and the installation of planters, decorative banners and more lighting.

An additional $200,000 in the budget is expected to go toward creating a shuttle to transport visitors to National Harbor and others between the waterfront and the King Street Metro station, with stops in between. Jinks said that the shuttle is likely to be free but that details are being worked out.

The convention and visitors association is working with National Harbor officials, who have agreed to display Alexandria promotional materials in their sales office, which is due to open next month. The association also is considering other proposals, such as providing more public restrooms near the waterfront and expanding the hours of the visitors center at King and Fairfax streets.

The city's preparations have won approval even from skeptics of the National Harbor project, including City Council member Andrew H. Macdonald (D). He said that the shoreline should be reserved for recreation and other natural uses and that National Harbor "is a terrible misuse of the waterfront. Every time I see it, I'm horrified."

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."