TYSONS, VA–Last year Boston Properties began charging for parking at Reston Town Center after it had been free for 26 years. A few months later the REIT was sued by a restaurant in the project on the grounds that the paid parking violated its lease and had damaged its business. The restaurant won a preliminary injunction but by this time Boston Properties had relented — other businesses in Reston Town Center were also angry about the paid parking — and narrowed the window for the fees to weekday afternoons.

Introducing paid parking into a market that had been used to free parking is clearly a fraught issue — and one that has been spreading to the Tysons submarket ever since the arrival of the Silver Line, according to a new white paper by Newmark Knight Frank.

“Charging for parking space is a phenomenon that we have seen in Rosslyn going back to the 1970s, and more recently in Bethesda and Ballston, but Tysons has remained largely unaffected throughout all those years,” NKF Senior Managing Director of National Research Sandy Paul told GlobeSt.com. “But now it's a submarket in transition with the access to metro and the emphasis on walkability.”