City of Fairfax planning commissioners say the latest incarnation of a plan to redevelop a key parcel along Chain Bridge Road has improved on past submissions, but most of them still didn’t like the proposal enough to support its approval.
The commission voted 4-2 on June 23 to recommend that the Fairfax City Council reject developer Paradigm Companies’ latest plan to replace a 109-year-old house at 4131 Chain Bridge Road with a 276-unit apartment building. The proposed project would occupy a 2.7-acre site and include about 11,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial/retail space.
“It’s great work,” Commissioner Paul Cunningham said of the plan, which was crafted in collaboration with the family that has owned the site for more than a century.
However, he was quick to add that the envisioned development could still be better.
“[Revise] it just a little and it’s fabulous work,” Cunningham said.
Commissioner Anthony Coleman joined chair James Feather in voting to recommend that the council support the plan, saying it’s time to move forward with redevelopment of a site that has stood empty for more than a decade.
“There is no perfect project,” Coleman said. “I don’t think this one is perfect, but I think it’s really good.”
He praised the development team for “listening to our feedback and coming back to us with a solution.”
Feather, too, saw the project as less-than-perfect, but acceptable nonetheless.
“I like the changes,” he told the applicant. “You’ve done a commendable job.”
According to statements of support for the development proposal, the Davies family that owns the property first partnered with Paradigm in 2016 to redevelop it with a 315-unit apartment building that they argued would be “a higher and better use more in keeping with surrounding development and the future vision for Old Town.”
The Fairfax City Council at the time questioned the size of the building and its residential-only nature, leading the developer to eventually withdraw its plan. Subsequent proposals for a townhouse community also failed to find traction.
In 2019, Sunrise Senior Living suggested turning the site into a two-building senior living facility that was later changed to one building based on the city council’s feedback. However, the proposal was withdrawn in 2021 after city leaders decided it would “not be the best use of the Property in terms of providing vibrancy and activation to Old Town.”
The current mixed-use concept stems from one filed in February 2022 by the developer Transwestern Development Company, then known as Perseus TDC, which suggested two five-story-tall residential buildings with 305 units and 5,167 square feet of ground-floor retail.
After Transwestern opted to terminate its contract in 2023, the Davies family decided to reteam with Paradigm and revise the concept into the one now being considered:
- Building A, closest to Chain Bridge Road, would include 114 apartment units plus the office/retail component in a five-story configuration
- Building B, closer to University Drive, would be a four-story structure with 162 apartment units and a courtyard/pool area
Three levels of underground parking would provide most of the 432 spaces on the site, exceeding the parking required by city zoning regulations. The number of bicycle spaces (46) and total amount of tree canopy (10.32%) also exceed city requirements.
Micheline Castan-Smith, executive vice president of Paradigm, said the project team had taken into account feedback and given the design a more residential character.
The city council will have to weigh dueling recommendations when taking up the project on July 22: the city’s Board of Architectural Review on June 18 recommended that it be approved.
In a memo for the planning commission’s June 23 public hearing, the city’s planning staff recommended approval of the development plan and requested rezoning, which would allow commercial uses on a currently residential site.
One speaker at the public hearing, city resident William Fournier, voiced concern that the proposal would move Fairfax on a path to further urbanization. He said citywide planning could result in a doubling of the population over the long term, an outcome that he contended “would be disastrous.”
The specific project proposed at 4131 Chain Bridge would add “too much” housing for the parcel and place the buildings too close to the roadways, Fournier said.
The massing of the buildings, transportation, parking and other issues were also on the minds of planning commissioners. Ultimately, Betsy Briggs, Kirsten Lockhart, Matthew Rice and Cunningham voted against recommending approval.
According to a 2024 historic analysis, the home at 4131 Chain Bridge Road — known as “The Hill” — was constructed circa 1916 for attorney Marshall Hall and his wife Martha Grigg Hall.
It was sold to state Sen. Richard Ewell Thornton and his wife Sue in 1920. After Sue Thornton’s death in 1954, it passed to her great-nephew, attorney James Bankhead Taylor Thornton Davies, and his wife Hope “Dixie” Davies. The couple occupied their home until their deaths in 2013.
While vacant since then, the Colonial Revival-style main house and remainder of the property have received timely upkeep, according to historical documentation.
The parcel is surrounded by a mix of uses, including offices, condominiums, a former bank, former restaurant and, across Chain Bridge Road, the Fairfax County Judicial Center.
