Though Herndon’s downtown revitalization push has stalled, a key piece of the town’s vision for development outside its Metro station reached a milestone last month.
The Town of Herndon Architectural Review Board (ARB) gave its approval on Nov. 20 to architectural and landscape design plans for the first phase of Fairfield Residential’s 555 Herndon Parkway project, a multifamily residential building with retail that will later be complemented by an office building.
Replacing a 1980s-era office building, the mixed-use development is the first one in the Herndon Transit-Oriented Core (HTOC) to reach this stage of approval, more than a decade after the master plan for redeveloping 38 acres of commercial properties north of the Herndon Metro Station was adopted.
“It’s an important project for the town,” Herndon Deputy Director of Community Development Bryce Perry told the ARB. “… It certainly has a lot of visibility from Herndon Parkway, the Dulles Toll Road and from the Metro, and I think it is actually the highest-density project that has gone through this process.”
Fairfield’s plan for 555 Herndon Parkway is more modest than the proposal that original developer Penzance brought to the town in 2017. Approved by the Herndon Town Council in April 2019, the initial plan called for two residential buildings with retail and an office building, totaling 813,637 square feet of development.
However, Penzance returned in December 2021 with a new plan that dropped one of the residential towers and reduced the office and retail square footage, citing a need to better respond to “market conditions,” according to a 2022 staff report for the Herndon Planning Commission.
The town council approved the downsized plan for an approximately 414-unit residential building and a 200,000-square-foot office building on Dec. 13, 2022. Fairfield then took over the project when it acquired the 4.3-acre site from Penzance in November 2023.
According to town staff, the design plans presented to the ARB last month showed a 400-unit residential building with approximately 5,300 square feet of ground-floor retail space in the northwest corner. An interior parking garage will be visible from the south until the future office tower is constructed.
Sprawling across an entire block, the building varies from six to eight stories in height and was designed to look like “a collection of smaller buildings as opposed to one large one,” according to Perry.
The general public will have access to a central courtyard at the building’s entrance on Herndon Parkway with a turf lawn, outdoor seating and art installations, along with a park near the garage with a pavilion, a pickleball court and a lawn area. Private amenity areas are also planned, including a swimming pool.
While town staff were “very close” to fully supporting the designs, Perry noted that there were still lingering concerns about a couple of items, particularly the scale of two building walls on either side of the garage and the “more cluttered composition” of the building’s eastern facade.
“The overall comment, though, is find a way to simplify the materials here. There’s five cladding materials,” he said. “Staff thinks that if there’s less materials or a hierarchy, that it would simplify this façade and make it more distinct as a separate architectural composition.”
For the garage, staff suggested lighting could help “add visual interest and customizable interactivity” on the side facing the public park and Dulles Toll Road.
“I do think the lighting could make that whole garage very dramatic, and I’m hoping that can be enhanced and resolved,” ARB member Melody Fetske agreed.
Ultimately, the ARB decided that the application was close enough to completion that it could be approved with the condition that the developer and architect keep working with staff to address the remaining concerns.
“There have been years of investment by the board in this project,” ARB Chair Leslie Baker-Glass said. “… I have every confidence that our staff, given where the board has engaged with the team for an extended period of time, is highly empowered to finish the more subjective details.”
A site plan has been finalized, and since the ARB meeting, Fairfield has submitted building permits for review by the town’s building official, according to Town of Herndon spokesperson Anne Papa.
As of this writing, the developer hasn’t returned a request for comment on a possible construction timeline, but its website lists 555 Herndon as coming in 2026. The residential units will include studio and one and two-bedroom apartments.
