Slowed Down, but Planning Big

"It's definitely taken longer than we thought to start construction but we're starting and we still believe 100 percent in Prince William County," said Carlos Cecchi, head of the condominium project, called Rivergate, for development firm IDG.

The Great Build

Kettler's vision for Harbor Station fit squarely with the county's aspirations to revive the beleaguered eastern corridor and erase its image as a collection of low-brow retail outlets and cheap tract housing.

In fall 2002, with the real estate engine of the Washington region running at full tilt, he walked onto the littered and sandy shoreline of the 2,500-acre lot for sale and saw gold. The Cherry Hill Peninsula of hardwood forests and two miles of riverfront had been largely overlooked. It was considered too close to the 15-mile stretch of Route 1 in Prince William, a busy four-lane highway with no sidewalks, huge parking lots that backed into cheap retail and at least a dozen auto dealerships.

"I've grown up in Woodbridge and one thing that has never changed is Route 1," said Paul Kim, who runs an auto body shop near the Rivergate condo project.

Yet as higher-income families came to Prince William looking for bigger homes with bigger yards, that image seemed to be changing. In 2002, the county hired the nonprofit Urban Land Institute to come up with a blueprint for future development.

The county decided that two new museums -- a science museum and the Marine Corps heritage museum -- would serve as bookends for redevelopment in the eastern edge. In between, at least three mixed-use commercial and residential projects would bring trophy homes, upscale groceries and department stores into town centers where residents could walk to public transportation, restaurants and shopping.

When the application to build a Wegman's grocery store came to a vote in February 2006, dozens of residents came to the board of supervisors meeting with "Wegman's Now" buttons pinned to their shirts.

A small army of developers and entrepreneurs began to take notice, hoping to get a piece of what one dubbed the Great Build. Big plans were hatched. The region was on its way.

And then the subprime-mortgage crisis hit and momentum stalled.

The proposed science museum is still $40 million short of funding. Down a few miles, plans for the Marumsco Plaza, a largely vacant shopping center stuck in a 1960s time warp, have been scaled back from a mixed-use town center with condos and apartments to include just retail. Instead of luxury retail, a coin-operated laundry and two dollar stores have appeared in the last year at the Featherstone Mall.

"As the process slows, it is quite possible Prince William County will never get back to where it wanted to go because as it waits, the old image of the area, old forces like lower-cost development, will reemerge and other places will have gained on them," said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.