Fairfax County supervisors wrapped up the 2024-2025 Site-Specific Plan Amendment (SSPA) cycle at their meeting on Tuesday (June 10) with a few tweaks to recommendations from the Planning Commission.
Projects that made the cut will now be placed on a county staff work plan for further review and community outreach. Rejected submissions can return in the next cycle, expected to start in about 18 months.
The county received 53 nominations in January and February through a process that allows the public to suggest land-use-related changes to the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan, which lays out the county’s vision for development and other priorities.
Supervisors advanced 43 of those proposals to a screening process that included community meetings and public workshops led by the Fairfax County Planning Commission, which finalized its recommendations on June 4.
Having an SSPA on the work plan doesn’t guarantee that a comprehensive plan change will ultimately be approved, but it opens the door for more in-depth study and discussions about the proposed revisions.
Perhaps the most controversial proposal before county leaders was a push to redevelop the Reston National Golf Course with housing. At its Tuesday meeting, the Board of Supervisors rejected a planning commission recommendation to put the project on the staff work plan.
Several other proposals also engendered community discussion:
Controversial Franklin Farm housing proposal advances
Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith said she was hopeful proponents and critics of a proposal to build housing on a church property in Franklin Farm could work to find common ground.
“There’s time for the community to come together and have discussions,” Smith said.
Community of Faith United Methodist Church is seeking authorization to construct 93 apartments on their site, located at 13224 Franklin Farm Road near Fairfax County Parkway in the Chantilly area.
The church, working with the affordable housing nonprofit Sanctuary AP3, initially proposed 157 units in several buildings. In addition to downsizing the total number of units, the partners agreed to reduce the height limit from five stories to three.
The church would remain on the site and not be affected by the proposal.
Planning commissioners and county staff recommended placing the proposal in the plan amendment work program’s lowest-priority grouping (Tier 3) for further consideration.
Telegraph Road housing proposal moves forward
Supervisors agreed with a planning commission recommendation to study a proposal for single-family detached homes on parcels at 6404 Telegraph Road and 6408 Highland Drive in Rose Hill.
That planning commission’s June 4 decision came after it informally rejected a developer’s plan to use the site for 29 townhouses in early May.
After that straw poll, property owner Peter Han proposed a smaller number of single-family detached homes on the site.
At the June 4 meeting, Franconia District Planning Commissioner Chris Landgraf and county planning staff said the site would be better served with detached housing. As a result, commission members voted unanimously to recommend the revised SSPA proposal be approved by supervisors, albeit at the lowest (Tier 3) priority.
Located near the Highland Park neighborhood pool, the property consists of two lots totaling 2.5 acres. One lot is vacant, the other has small commercial uses on it.
Downscaled Little River Turnpike proposal advances
Supervisors ratified a planning commission proposal to consider a plan for a reduced number of housing units at 6675 Little River Turnpike in Annandale.
The planning commission’s discussion of the proposal on June 4 was intense, concluding with a 8-4 split to forward its recommendation to supervisors.
Submitted by property owner George Hong, the original plan called for a five-story residential building with 186 units and up to 16,714 square feet of commercial or retail space on parcels totaling 1.9 acres at 4600 and 4604 Randolph Drive, 6675 Little River Turnpike, and 4605 Columbia Road.
“We can all agree that the proposed density is too high,” Mason District Commissioner Alis Wang said at the June 4 meeting.
Wang ended up proposing that an SSPA study look at either placing 75 to 125 units of multifamily housing with neighborhood retail on the site, or using the parcel for townhouses.
Her proposal also asked staff to look closely at impacts on traffic, parking and pedestrian safety. Wang suggested placing the study in the work program’s third tier.
Hunter Mill District Commissioner John Carter objected to studying the proposal at all, noting that a similar redevelopment pitch for the site had been rejected in 2023.
“It’s time for the nominator to go back to the drawing board,” he said.
Dranesville District Commissioner Alyssa Batchelor-Causey said the options proposed by Wang were better than what had come before, though she still struggled with moving forward.
“There is a huge need for housing in the Mason District,” Batchelor-Causey said, adding that she didn’t want the site to sit vacant for the next couple of years.
Wang agreed with that sentiment. She added that the onus is on the property owner to improve his proposal and get community buy-in.
“This nomination has issues,” she said. “It needs a lot of work, and the developer will have to put in the work.”
Dranesville church’s housing plan remains on list
Officials with Dranesville United Methodist Church have told county officials they still intend to move forward with a plan to add affordable housing to the church site at 1089 Liberty Meeting Court.
As a result, the board agreed on Tuesday not to remove the plan from the existing list of proposed plan amendments and instead retain it at Tier 2, which is typically for sites not in the county’s top focus areas for development.
Staff initially recommended that the proposal to construct a five-story building with up to 90 units of affordable housing be removed from the work plan, because the church had not taken steps to move forward on the project after it was added during the 2022-2023 SSPA cycle.
But after further review, it was determined that the project for the site remained a viable option under consideration.
The church occupies three parcels totaling about 8.1 acres near the intersection of Leesburg Pike and Sugarland Road. Under the proposal, the housing would be placed to the west of the church, which would remain.
The site also includes a cemetery, columbarium, child care and nursery school that will be retained if it’s developed.
Franconia senior housing proposal authorized for review
In a vote separate from the package of SSPA approvals, the Board of Supervisors placed a proposal to replace a vacant office building in Franconia with senior housing on county staff’s comprehensive plan amendment work program.
According to county records, an entity managed by McLean-based developer Sandeep Lohia purchased the 9.75-acre parcel at 6801 Telegraph Road from the federal government for $6.65 million in 2023. The 110,000-square-foot building had been occupied by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which vacated the premises in 2016.
Lohia has conceived a plan to convert the existing office building into apartments for seniors, with some units reserved for lower-income residents. In addition, the concept plan calls for up to 50 attached or detached single-family homes.
To date, the proposal has been “generally favorably received” by the community, Franconia District Supervisor Rodney Lusk said.
Lusk’s motion to authorize a comprehensive plan amendment study was approved by the board without dissent. It will assist with efforts to “facilitate further community engagement and staff review” of the proposal, Lusk told his colleagues.
