Construction continues at Capital One’s headquarters campus in Tysons, this time to turn vacant land near the McLean Metro station into urban parks.
Work on the future Capital One East and “Block D” parks has been underway for months. In addition to providing open space and recreational amenities, the projects will deliver hundreds of new parking spaces, though it’s unclear whether the lots will be free or paid.
“Capital One Center continues to expand, with construction underway near the McLean Metro Station which will include additional parking and urban parks, slated to be completed in 2025,” a spokesperson for the development said.
The parks were approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in November 2022 in conjunction with Capital One Park, a temporary baseball diamond that opened for its first season of college and high school-level games in 2023.
Capital One Block D
Adjacent to the McLean Metro station, the park in Capital One Center’s currently undeveloped Block D is being built on top of a five-level, 296-space underground parking garage.
The park will occupy about half of a 3.12-acre site previously used for staging construction equipment. It’s bounded by Dolley Madision Blvd (Route 123) to the south, Capital One Drive to the north and Scotts Crossing Road to the east.
Amenities will include a central water fountain and splash pad, a boardwalk pier along the eastern edge of the park, a “flexible” lawn area, a synthetic turf area with a “play structure,” outdoor seating and shade, a food truck parking area, and volleyball courts, according to a site plan that the county approved in May.
When the park is finished, Metro will be able to open a new entrance to the McLean station. Located near Scotts Crossing Road, the entrance will be the first on the station’s north side, giving transit users a more direct way to get to Capital One Center.
“Our portion of the work is done, but we’re waiting for the construction site just outside the entrance to be completed sometime next year before we can open that entrance,” a Metro spokesperson confirmed.
Though most of the park will be permanent, the volleyball courts will eventually be replaced with a 33-story residential building with ground-floor retail under a master plan for developing Capital One’s campus that has been in place since 2012.
The plan calls for a 22-story office building with retail on the remainder of Block D. Capital One has proposed leasing the area for a temporary retail building and possible pickleball, bocce and cornhole courts until it’s ready to construct the office building, but work on those interim uses hasn’t begun.
Capital One East
Located on the east side of Scotts Crossing Road next to the baseball field, the Capital One East park will feature paved walkways, a shallow central pond with a boulder waterfall, exercise stations, play areas, benches and public restrooms, according to a site plan that the county approved on July 17.
The park will occupy a corner of the 3.13-acre site, which is currently a surface parking lot. Per the site plan, 179 spaces will be retained.
Capital One bought the property at 1820 Dolley Madison Blvd from Scotts Run developer Cityline Partners in 2019, but it has indicated so far that it plans to stick to the existing Scotts Run North plan approved in 2015.
The 1.5 million square feet of planned development will replace the parking lot and Capital One Park with two residential buildings and three office buildings, each of them with some retail space. There’s an option to construct a hotel instead of one office building.
