527 Residences, a Grocery Store and a Hotel: The Plans for a West Falls Church Site

• April 15th 2021

by Nena Perry-Brown

A massive mixed-use development on the nearly 10-acre site of George Mason High School in Falls Church is on track for another round of approvals.

Falls Church Gateway Partners or FCGP (comprised of EYA and Hoffman & Associates) previously received approval in 2019 for a mix of housing, office, hotel and retail off Route 7 (map). Amendments were filed in June 2020 and at the beginning of the year to, among other things, adjust the timing of, and the placement of different uses throughout the first phase.

The development components in the first phase, which will include roughly 120,000 square feet of retail, are now as follows:

• Building A1 will contain 400 rental apartments above a 40,000 square-foot grocery store. While the team is under a non-disclosure agreement with the grocer, they stated that the grocer will be unique and will complement, rather than compete with, the Giant grocery store a block away. Torti Gallas + Partners is the designer.
• Building B1 will be a 125,000 square-foot office building with ground-floor retail, developed in partnership with Trammell Crow and designed by Gensler. 
• Building B2 will be a 150-room extended stay hotel above retail, designed by Jonathan Nehmer & Associates.
• Building C1 will be a 127-unit condominium building with arts education space, designed by SK + I Architecture.
• Building D1 will be roughly 225 units of senior housing and will also be completed by a separate development team. About 60% of the building would serve active adults and the remainder would house memory care and assisted living services.
• B3 will be a parking garage for retail patrons, the office building, and adjacent schools, and D2 will be a parking garage for the senior building and for retail patrons. Both are designed by Torti Gallas + Partners.

Demolition will begin on the high school by this summer and a new high school will be constructed nearby.

This isn't the first time that changes have been made to the project: construction costs led the development team to place the majority of the parking above-grade, and the boundaries of the first phase were also previously adjusted.

The second phase is expected to deliver another 149 residential units and another 125,000 square feet of office space. Plans for how the development will incorporate affordable housing will be presented later this month. 

The Falls Church City Council is scheduled to vote on the amended plans in late May, and the project could break ground by the end of the year. Two other large-scale mixed-use developments, helmed respectively by Virginia Tech and WMATA (via a development team that also includes EYA and Hoffman & Associates), are also in the works on adjacent sites.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/527-residences-a-grocery-store-and-a-hotel-the-plans-for-a-west-falls-churc/18137.