The Fairfax County Board of supervisors gave final approval yesterday (Tuesday) to a proposal that will bring a next-generation health-care facility to the West Falls Church area.
The project also will provide what county leaders say are much-needed traffic-safety improvements to the area of Arlington Blvd and Graham Road.
The unanimous vote to approve the proposal represented “a win-win-win-win-win in so many ways,” Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said.
“This has been a long time [coming],” she said during discussion with board colleagues. “It took a couple of years.”
The special-exception request will allow the new facility on a 2.4-acre site that has been home to the single-story Graham Center shopping complex since the 1950s.
The existing shopping center will be razed. In its place will rise a 14,000-square-foot emergency room/urgent-care facility and an additional 10,250 feet of medical-office space.
A partnership between Arlington-based VHC Health (formerly Virginia Hospital Center) and Texas-based Intuitive Health, the facility will have a licensed physician charged with evaluating arriving patients to determine whether they need emergency-room or urgent-care services. The patients and their insurers would be billed based on the level of need.
An estimated 19,500 people could be served annually on a walk-in basis. Like a traditional emergency room, no patients in need would be turned away. There would be no overnight stays in the facility.
The proposal also comes with a host of transportation and pedestrian-safety upgrades to an intersection that has seen its share of crashes and near-misses, county officials said.
Among other changes, the developers have agreed to replace a service drive with 10-foot-wide shared-use paths along both Graham Road and Arlington Blvd, add sidewalks on the property’s northern and western boundaries, and install crosswalks.
The project had been vetted and supported by the county’s planning commission and Health Care Advisory Board. County staff told supervisors that input from surrounding neighborhoods was incorporated into the final package.
