The corner of Maple Avenue and Nutley Street where the Vienna Wolf Trap Hotel and Tequila Grande continues to lie fallow, but the developer hoping to revitalize the site is at least working to make it more presentable.
Hekemian & Company and its civil engineering firm Walter L. Phillips got the Vienna Board of Architectural Review’s (BAR) approval on Jan. 16 to maintain a chain-link fence around the 2.8-acre property at 444 Maple Avenue West through the end of this year.
As a condition of the approval, the developer must “truncate” a corner of the 6-foot-tall fence to improve visibility for vehicles and pedestrians visiting Purple Onion Catering Company, which is just north of the site at 416 Maple Avenue West.
Hekemian Senior Vice President of Acquisition and Development Chris Bell also agreed that his company will clear any debris and shrubs outside of the fence along both Maple and Nutley after BAR members observed that some of the plants had begun to wilt.
“What is alive is just so, so sad. I live off of Nutley and just up the street, so I see it often,” one board member said, adding later that people have been “tossing” litter into the shrubbery while waiting for the light to change at the intersection.
Town of Vienna Zoning Administrator Andrea West issued a zoning code violation for 444 Maple Avenue last May after determining that the property was out of compliance with a site plan approved in June 2021 for a mixed-use development.
Because the site plan didn’t include any “development phase” allowing the property to remain “in an unimproved condition,” the lack of construction following the demolition of the existing hotel and restaurant in 2022 constituted a violation, West said in a May 8, 2024 notice.
Hekemian challenged the determination before Vienna’s Board of Zoning Appeals. After multiple deferrals, the board decided in November to set its March, 19 2025 meeting as the deadline for the developer to resolve the conflict by submitting an interim site plan and improving the property’s condition.
Approved by the Vienna Town Council in October 2018, the planned 444 Maple redevelopment will consist of a four-story building with 151 residential apartments on top of 20,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.
Back in 2022, a site plan indicated that the restaurants Mellow Mushroom and Tom Yum Thai, among other tenants, were in line for the retail space, but now, marketing materials show all suites as still available for leasing.
Though Hekemian had hoped to start construction within a few months of demolishing Wolf Trap Hotel and Tequila Grande, Bell told the BAR last month that the Covid-influenced economy and other factors “conspired against us at the time.”
With an updated site plan in hand, the developer is now working to revise architectural drawings to submit to Fairfax County for a building permit. It expects to apply for a permit in early summer and obtain in late summer after a six-to-eight-week review, Bell said.
“We’re looking for an extension basically to get an approval for this fence as it is to take us through the end of September so we can get to a place where … we’re back in construction mode, if you will,” Bell told the BAR.
The board gave Hekemian until the end of the year or the issuance of a building permit by Fairfax County to turn its existing fence into a “construction fence,” which are allowed “basically anywhere” during construction, according to town staff.
Because it’s expected to stay standing for several more months, the current fence needed to get the BAR’s approval as a “permanent” fence, which must meet setback requirements under the town code, staff said.
By agreeing to an end-of-year deadline instead of the September one suggested by Bell, board members sounded wary but hopeful that the long-percolating development is getting on the right track.
“The town, they really are tired of it. It’s a main entrance into our town,” one member said. “… But if [Bell is] asking for the end of the year, I can’t see any difference with two or three months if you’re sincere about getting things going.”
