The Fairfax County Planning Commission gave its support last week to a mixed-use development dubbed McLean Crossing in Tysons.
The proposal for redeveloping the Commons of McLean apartments at 1640 Anderson Road will now be considered for final approval by the Board of Supervisors in the new year. Ultimately, as many as 5,000 people could call the property their home.
Despite concerns raised on a number of issues, the planning commissioners generally had laudatory things to say about property owner and developer LCOR’s plan for 2.72 million square feet of new construction.
“McLean Crossing will rank with the best in Tysons,” Commission chairman Phil Niedzielski-Eichner (At-Large) said during the Dec. 11 public hearing. “The project checks all the boxes.”
The McLean Crossing site occupies land straddling both sides of Anderson Road, adjacent to Chain Bridge Road, the Commons Shopping Center and the MITRE office campus.
In a rezoning application submitted to the county in 2022, the developer laid out three possible scenarios with varying amounts of residential, retail and commercial space. One of the options would include a continuing-care facility for seniors.
Heights of the 11 buildings would range from 75 to 225 feet, with about one-third of the parcel remaining open space.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” Braddock District Commissioner Mary Cortina said of the planned development.
The county approved a previous development proposal for the 18.7-acre site in 2013, but only one structure — a 15-story apartment building called The Kingston — has materialized. After it was completed in 2018, the property owner went back to the drawing board on the rest of the parcel.
The revised proposal “is not a reinvention of the wheel” but does adapt to changing market conditions, Robert Brant, a land use attorney representing LCOR, told the planning commission.
Lingering issues include parking and traffic management, but they were left to be fleshed out when property owner LCOR returns to the county for approval of a final development plan.
“Staff worked really closely with the applicant to get to a middle ground on a variety of issues, and I think we accomplished that,” Sharon Williams, a county planner and lead staffer on the proposal, said.
The McLean Citizens Association passed a resolution on Dec. 4 supporting the project in principle, but like several planning commissioners, the organization’s board of directors had concerns that an athletic field to be built atop retail and parking space might not come for more than a decade.
Williams said planning staff had the same concern.
“There’s already a residential building [the Kingston] where people are living, and there’s not publicly accessible park space,” she said. “So, we’d like this to be moved up.”
Brant said the field, which will be turned over to the Fairfax County Park Authority, will be up and running no later than 2037 — three years quicker than the 2040 date originally in the application.
The field and other components of the development will likely come sooner rather than later, he assured the commission.
“LCOR’s intentions are very much aligned with the county’s intentions in seeing something happen here quickly,” he said.
Development will ultimately lead to the razing of the nearly 60-year-old apartment complex currently on the site. Cortina asked that more detail be provided to the supervisors about plans to support Commons of McLean residents who eventually will be displaced by construction.
“This should really be an important part of the work that we do,” she said of crafting an appropriate relocation plan.
The only speaker at the public hearing, a representative of the nearby Morgan at McLean condominiums, raised concerns about parking logistics and the need for more buffer space, which Brant said he would follow up on.
Dranesville District Commissioner John Ulfelder noted that, fresh out of law school, he had moved into an apartment at Commons of McLean in 1967.
“There’s a lot of history on this site, and it would be good to recognize it and to give people some historical background,” he said.
Ulfelder had no objections to the apartment he once called home coming down.
“I’m glad to see [the area] is continuing to grow and develop,” he said. “A lot of people who were around in the 1960s would be amazed.”
Depending on the final design option chosen by the developer, the property ultimately will become home to about 2,500 residences, with between 231 and 319 subsidized workforce dwelling units in the mix.
The new proposal has about 100,000 more square feet of planned development than the 2013 submission. While overall parkland will decline compared to the original plan, 32% of the property would remain open space.
