Years of work to redevelop the core of downtown Herndon have officially fizzled out.
Developer Comstock informed town leaders last Friday (Dec. 6) that it will no longer move forward with a long-awaited project that promised apartments, retail, an arts center and a public parking garage, interim town manager Chris Martinez announced at the Herndon Town Council meeting tonight (Tuesday).
“Although this development agreement did not work out as planned, we continue to believe in the significant redevelopment potential of Herndon’s downtown,” Martinez said. “We will take some time to evaluate how we go about the redevelopment of downtown Herndon consistent with the town council’s adopted strategic plan.”
The announcement brought an audible gasp from some members of the public in the council chambers. During the public comments section earlier in the meeting, one resident expressed her frustration at walking by empty lots, some of them wrapped with a banner notoriously proclaiming that “excitement is building” for the project.
“It’s ugly, honestly. It’s an eye sore to the town,” resident Michelle Boone said. “We should just turn it into a dog park at this point, because nothing’s happening, so it’s frustrating because I’ve seen high rises go up in Reston, and it’s still a pile of dirt … Everyone’s beyond frustrated. I’m really looking forward to either making progress with that or taking a different route and doing another project or something else.”
Comstock’s withdrawal from the project came after years of stalling and just months after expressing confidence that it would be able to break ground on construction next April.
Building on a master plan for downtown Herndon adopted in 2011, Comstock first entered into a comprehensive agreement with the town in October 2017 for a redevelopment project that would deliver 281 residential apartments, 17,600 square feet of retail space, an 18,000-square-foot arts center and a 761-space parking garage on 5 acres bounded by Center, Elden and Station streets and the Washington & Old Dominion Trail.
At that time, construction was expected to begin in early 2019, but the project got held up when neighboring property owners appealed its Architectural Review Board approval in 2018. Then, the developer exercised its option for a two-year pause in April 2022, citing an uncertain economic climate due to cost increases, supply chain disruptions and other fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the two-year hiatus ran out on April 30, the town and developer have continued to push back a deadline for finalizing an amended agreement, first to Aug. 15, then Sept. 10.
In September, town staff indicated that Dec. 10 would be a hard deadline, reporting that they had agreed to scale back the planned arts center to just 4,265 square feet in the hopes of making the project more feasible and attractive to lenders.
The number of residential units had also changed over the years to 273 apartments.
Last month, Town of Herndon staff proposed a financing plan that would’ve involved borrowing an estimated $15 to $20 million through the Fairfax City Economic Development Authority, mostly to fund the arts center and parking garage. Comstock would’ve been responsible for making lease payments to the town until its costs were recovered, with the garage as collateral.
Comstock didn’t immediately return a request for comment, but in its letter notifying the town of its withdrawal, the developer said the project had become “economically unfeasible” due to increased material costs and difficulties obtaining “commercially reasonable financing,” and the legal structure “overly complicated.”
“The decision to deliver this Notice Not to Proceed was very difficult for Comstock after years of planning and efforts, but unfortunately the current market has not yet rebounded sufficiently to move forward,” Comstock founder and CEO Christopher Clemente wrote.
The full implications of the developer’s withdrawal remain to be seen. Among other impacts, the downtown redevelopment was poised to temporarily displace Arts Herndon, which subleases space in a commercial building at 750 Center Street.
The town council approved an agreement on Nov. 12 to continue letting the arts organization use the space until March 31, 2025, a date chosen to precede the expected start of construction. The town had planned to let Arts Herndon use a space previously occupied by NextStop Theatre Company during construction.
