This piece was created in partnership with Covering the Corridor, a local news website covering Southeast Fairfax County. Learn more at coveringthecorridor.com.
Chris Militzer/Miliman 12 Photography
Fairfax County’s first bus rapid transit system.
Metro to Hybla Valley.
Mixed-use developments — some with buildings as tall as 22 stories.
This is Fairfax County’s vision for the future of the Route 1 corridor. The changes outlined in Embark Richmond Highway, an update to the county’s comprehensive plan passed in March 2018, envisions a complete overhaul of Route 1 from Huntington to Woodlawn.
It is nothing short of radical for an area known for its large shopping centers, bad traffic and gritty edges.
Six community business centers (CBCs) will constructed over time, each with its own bus rapid transit (BRT) station. The CBCs will be designed to have unique characteristics — the Beacon/Groveton CBC, for instance, is envisioned as a town center with high-intensity development and the tallest buildings, while the Hybla Valley/Gum Springs CBC will tie-in with that area’s nearby environmental resources.
Areas that are currently the site of large retail centers will eventually be replaced by new grids of streets in the CBCs, with some featuring linear parks.
The “transit-oriented design” will place emphasis on multimodal forms of transportation, with BRT running through the CBCs from the Huntington Metro station to Fort Belvoir. Dedicated bike lanes and large, connected sidewalks will be up and down the corridor along Route 1, making a place known for being less-than-friendly to pedestrians and bikers into something urbanists can get excited about.
“Overall, it’s a very positive vision for the future for really the oldest corridor in the county, “ said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a DC-based advocacy group. “It would create walkable, transit oriented-communities with a network of streets, strong bicycling infrastructure… [and] green ecological corridors running through it.”
A Long Time Coming...
Even more excited about Embark are the local officials and community groups who have worked for years to improve the corridor. At a business breakfast this past Halloween hosted by the Southeast Fairfax Development Corporation, an economic development group founded by the county in 1981 to focus on revitalizing the corridor, politicians and other major stakeholders touted the highway’s sudden ascendance because of Embark.
“I’ve never been more inspired than I am now,” said Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay, who has served in office since 2007 and grew up in the Woodlawn area. “It’s clear that we have great opportunities here moving forward.”
Chris Militzer/Miliman 12 Photography
McKay said more than $1 billion in transportation and infra-structure improvements are coming, including a $215 million road-widening project, a $700+ million bus rapid transit project and millions of dollars in smaller improvements.
Route 1 residents and officials have waited years for that kind of attention from the county and state, and now that the public investment is coming, major change appears poised to finally happen.
“This is a different day in the life of Richmond Highway and the Route 1 corridor — one that I think we can all be very proud of because it’s taken a long time to get here,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck told the audience at the business breakfast.
Work on the Embark amendment began in 2015, but its roots are in countless studies about how to improve transportation in the region. The most influential of those studies was the Route 1 Multimodal Alternatives Analysis conducted in 2013 and 2014 by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
State Sen. Scott Surovell, then a Virginia delegate, worked with former State Sen. Toddy Puller to secure funding for the $2 million multimodal analysis, which ultimately recommended many of the transportation improvements included in Embark. Surovell, whose sprawling 36th district covers much of the Route 1 corridors in Fairfax County and in Prince William County, said improving Richmond Highway was a big reason he ran for office.
“I felt like the Route 1 corridor had been left behind relative to the rest of Fairfax County,” said Surovell, who grew up in the Fort Hunt area and still lives there today.
Once the Board of Supervisors authorized the county to begin working on Embark, the two-and a-half-year task of writing and refining the plan commenced with close collaboration between county agencies and the local community. A 13-member advisory group made up of residents, SFDC members and other stakeholders met monthly with county officials. Officials hosted six com-munity meetings and open houses in addition to several smaller meetings with local community groups.
“This was the most comprehensive, sophisticated review of a corridor outside of Tysons Corner that we’ve ever done in Fairfax County,” McKay said.
Pumping the Brakes
For all of the enthusiasm surrounding Embark, the biggest changes will not come quickly. This point was driven home during a panel discussion at a Halloween business breakfast.
Three of the panelists, representatives for owners of The Beacon Center, Mount Vernon Plaza and Woodlawn shopping centers, made clear that while they’re optimistic about the highway’s future, the economic reality on the ground means there’s no rush to develop. A variety of reasons, from leases to waiting to see how the road widening plays out, were given for the patient approach. But each panelist indicated that as more residential developments with increased density are built, the centers can begin moving on the redevelopment.
“I think what we see today is the economics coming forward,” said Carlos Heard, head of acquisitions of B.F. Saul Company, the owner of the Beacon Center. “[But] we don’t think it’s quite there yet for what we have in mind.”
In the meantime, Heard said he expects investors and smaller landowners to begin taking advantage of Opportunity Zones, which are a new revitalization tool that allows investors to receive tax benefits on currently unrealized capital gains by investing those gains in areas that qualify.
Another panelist, Mychael Cohn of Cohn Property Group, said other incentive packages from local government could expedite the process.
All of the panelists were in agreement that completion of the BRT project would be a major factoring in triggering more development.
“I think the catalyst here, BRT, will really help launch redevelopment along Route 1,” said Kari Gilinski of Federal Realty, owner of Mount Vernon Plaza shopping center in Hybla Valley. “But certainly, it’s going to take some time for Route 1 to mature in order for Mount Vernon Plaza to become a [new Montgomery County development] Pike and Rose.”
The Near Future
Even if the big centers take decades to transform, Richmond Highway started changing even before the passage of Embark. Newer developments like the Beacon of Groveton, a mixed-use development on Route 1, as well as the Shelby Apartments on North Kings Highway and The Parker apartments on Huntington Avenue have opened in recent years.
A number of other projects are in the pipeline, with many expected to begin construction in the next few years.
• South Alex: A mixed-use development in Penn Daw that will feature 400 apartments, 41 townhouses and ground-level retail anchored by an Aldi grocery store. The townhomes area already being built and the rest of the project was expected to start construction in late 2018.
• Huntington Club: A mixed-use development that will replace an existing garden apartment and townhouse community on Huntington Avenue. It will consist of approximately 2,100 multifamily and 70 single-family attached dwelling units, 496,000 square feet of office use, 18,500 square feet of retail use and 123,000 square feet of hotel use.
• Kings Crossing: A 350-unit multifamily development approved for the intersection of Richmond Highway and Fairview Drive.
• Riverside Apartments: The oldest high-rise development on the highway has been approved to construct five new smaller high rises, filling in a sea of parking and adding 767 units
to the 1,222 units already in the three high-rise buildings. The development will also include a new park with access to Cameron Run.
• North Hill: Located at the corner of Richmond Highway and Dart Drive, this development will consist of 219 affordable and workforce apartments, 60 affordable independent living units for seniors and 175 market rate townhomes.
• The Grande at Huntington: This mixed-use project at the intersection of North Kings Highway and Richmond Highway may have 275 residential units and 25,000 square feet of ground-level retail space. However, since it was approved by the Board of Supervisors in June 2013, the project has been on hold.
Holly Dougherty has worked closely with the local business community and government since 2001 as a board member and executive director of the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce. Dougherty, who advocates for many of the small businesses who may be displaced by the road widening and BRT projects, says the near future will be a stressful time for local businesses. However, she remains bullish on the future of the highway as public investments are finally being made.
“For a long time, we never saw any movement. Boy, that all changed,” Dougherty joked. “So we’re excited about that. It’s going to be kind of painful the next 10 years or so, but I think the results will be very good.”
McKay and Storck have created a new economic team (Dougherty is a member) that will focus on attracting business to invest sooner rather than later along Richmond Highway. McKay, since the passage of Embark, has said the most important thing the county must do is keep momentum going forward. He says his office has already received a “remarkable” number of inquiries from developers and businesses, and his main worry is not capitalizing while interest in the highway is at an all-time high.
“I’ve always felt like we could get to this point,” McKay said. “It takes time, persistence. What would be really awful would be if we miss this opportunity.”
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2019 print edition of Alexandria Living Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
