Takeo
I agree with most of your assessment, and that pushing fights will push players out of the game.
Players that want battles, will drive as far as it takes to do it however, even if it takes all week to setup. So I'm not sure JUST more space will solve it. The new space is going to need a couple things to work.
The new space will need the focused attention of who ever is moving there and require it for an extended period. Meaning that the new space shouldnt be someplace to run to, but a place that the more powerful corp wants to take and hold, leaving the less dangerous existing space for other corps to gather strengh. Since there player base isn't there, it would have to be some type of NPC defense, something that would take time and effort to win. Something like NPC's drop items that you have to get 10,000 of to unlock the station, which will allow the corp to dock, but then another stage to open PBS, and then needing to defend that against NPC's. And of course, the whole time PVP can be happening on that space too, but the key is that players that want to fight are getting to, while corps or players that are on the fence (can't be pushed) are given time to rest up.
tl;dr - The game needs a challenge for established corps, if that challenge is new space, that will work.
Edit; Oh, and whatever is there, should be Fun not just a long grind; yeah, tricky