Local residents have until Aug. 31 to provide feedback on new gateway signage for the Bailey’s Crossroads and Seven Corners areas of the county.
Fairfax County’s Community Revitalization Section has unveiled a number of design options, aimed at providing consistent branding and a sense of excitement in the Route 7 corridors.
“Bailey’s Crossroads and Seven Corners are really the center of Northern Virginia,” said Mike Van Atta, president of the Crossroads and Corners Coalition, which supports development in the area.
Speaking in a county government video highlighting a recent workshop on the proposed signage, Van Atta said that some people, both inside and outside the Bailey’s Crossroads and Seven Corners corridors, have an outdated view of them, and he can understand why.
“The built environment is very auto-oriented. It’s a little tired. It doesn’t necessarily align with the energy and the vibrancy that the communities have,” Van Atta said.
The county has partnered with Ashton Design to develop sign concepts for vetting by the public.
Jenny Romei Hoffman, principal of the firm, said it has been and would continue to be “a very collaborative process.”
“We don’t want to push any designs on the community,” she said. “We hope that the designs come out of the community.”
The online survey, which will remain open through the end of August, is another part of an effort to garner the public’s views.
“We’ll continue to refine the designs based on community feedback,” said Alexander Howle, a program manager at the county’s Department of Planning and Development.
The Bailey’s Crossroads area is centered on the interchange of Leesburg Pike and Columbia Pike, totaling about 430 acres. It is home to approximately 9 million square feet of commercial development and 3 million square feet of residential development across 431 acres of land.
The community is named for Hachaliah Bailey, who purchased land in the area in the 1830s. It became the permanent home of himself and his circus troupe that ultimately evolved into the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Not once but twice, Bailey’s Crossroads was slated to receive transit service that did not materialize:
- During the 1960s, original plans for the Metro system envisioned a subway line running from the Pentagon to Bailey’s underneath Columbia Pike. It was later abandoned for the current route of the Blue Line, which heads into Alexandria and then south to Springfield.
- In the early 2000s, Bailey’s was slated to be the western terminus of a five-mile streetcar system connecting to the Pentagon via Columbia Pike. Arlington officials pulled the plug on that proposal in 2014, citing a lack of consensus for moving forward.
Seven Corners is located not far to the west of Bailey’s, around the infamous intersection of Leesburg Pike, Arlington Blvd and Wilson Blvd. It consists of approximately 3.6 million square feet of commercial development and 600,000 square feet of residential development across 265 acres of land.
A proposed bus rapid transit service that would pass through Seven Corners on Route 7 is currently being studied.
Both areas are designated as a commercial revitalization district where the county sees “potential for future transformation into more urban, walkable, mixed-use centers,” according to the Community Revitalization Section, which is part of the Fairfax County Department of Planning and Development.
There are some redevelopment projects are in the works for both neighborhoods. Among them are proposals to redevelop the Food Star site in Bailey’s and the empty Sears building just east of Seven Corners.
