New Retail Center Stirs Concerns About Traffic

On any given afternoon, navigating Columbia Heights in a car can be a teeth-gnashing challenge, with residents and visitors coming and going and construction workers and their trucks clogging traffic lanes.

And that was before the Target-anchored shopping center opened yesterday, smack in the middle of it all.

How much will DC USA, as the 500,000-square-foot mall is known, add to the neighborhood's traffic?

It depends on the time of day, D.C. officials say. Traffic volume along 14th Street NW is expected to increase by 8 percent in the morning, according to the D.C. Department of Transportation.

And during the evening rush? Try a 30 percent increase.

And that does not include the motorists who swing by to sample the neighborhood's bevy of new restaurants.

Columbia Heights residents are bracing for their neighborhood to turn into something akin to a gridlocked parking lot.

"Fourteenth Street is off the hook!" Annie McCutchen, a retired cashier, railed at a recent community meeting. "We don't have a place to park, and it's only going to get worse."

Not to worry, say D.C. officials, who were fine-tuning a counteroffensive even as the shopping center was opening. Their plan includes more meters, stricter residential parking regulations and additional enforcement officers.

The traffic generated by the mall is only part of a challenge that transportation officials face because of the development unfolding along the neighborhood's narrow streets.

In addition to DC USA and more than three dozen businesses that have recently opened or signed leases, about 2,000 residential units have been built in Columbia Heights in the past five years, officials say.

All of which means that traveling by car to DC USA may be less than ideal, despite the mall's 1,200-car underground garage.