Just as the Green Line stops at the West Hyattsville Metro station, it buzzes past a hive of construction activity.
Contractors place beams, plant trees and paint siding a few yards west of the station where a whole new neighborhood is springing up. The Riverfront at West Hyattsville Metro will bring nearly 700 units of housing — half townhomes and half apartments — to land that previously served as a drive-in movie theater, and before that an airstrip. Gilbane Development Co. has made haste, and the first few residents have begun to move in.
It’s one of the biggest new projects in years for Hyattsville, a relatively compact bedroom community of 2.67 square miles. The city has in recent years has focused its efforts on spurring housing development, and that’s paid off as as hundreds of housing units came online — and the city’s population swelled from 17,500 in 2010 to 21,200 a decade later. Close to 800 new housing units are under development in the city right now.
