As he approaches his 18th anniversary as CEO of Visit Fairfax, Barry Biggar has the same item atop his to-do list as when he started on the job: a conference center.
“We needed it 25 years ago, we need it today,” Biggar said during a Jan. 28 presentation to the Fairfax County Planning Commission.
Responding to questions from commission chair Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner, Biggar was quick to note that he hopes to see “a conference center — not a convention center, a conference center.”
Attempting to compete with convention centers in surrounding localities, from D.C. to Prince George’s County to Baltimore, would be “probably the biggest waste of taxpayer money you can involve yourself in,” Biggar recalled telling Fairfax officials when being interviewed to lead the tourism agency nearly two decades ago.
“The competitiveness to fill that building would be unsustainable,” he said.
The property owner’s decision to close the Dulles Expo Center last month, leasing the building instead to Ikea, seems to support that assessment of a convention center’s viability, though the Chantilly venue drew a variety of events during its 25 years in business.
Instead, Biggar would like to find a way to create a conference facility of around 140,000 square feet.
By comparison, the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C. totals 2.3 million square feet, including 703,000 square feet of exhibit space.
The Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor offers about 540,000 square feet of meeting space. The National Conference Center in Loudoun County offers around 265,000 square feet of meeting space connected to a hotel.
For years, the county’s largest conference facility was at the Sheraton Tysons Hotel, which closed in 2020 and has been slated for conversion into affordable housing since 2024.
Although the Visit Fairfax website lists several dozen venues for conference planners to consider, Biggar is thinking, well, bigger.
The Jan. 28 discussion was kept at the aspirational level. It did not wade into questions of where, or how, such a facility would come to be.
Developer Comstock Companies has proposed including a convention center in the entertainment complex anchored by a casino it hopes to build in Tysons. But other options are available as well.
Biggar last November visited with the Board of Supervisors. He told leaders then that additional funding flowing in from the Oct. 1, 2025, increase in the county’s transient occupancy tax from 4% to 6% would further spur efforts to promote tourism and business meetings in the county.
Biggar was tapped as CEO of Visit Fairfax in August 2008 after five years leading the Bryan-College Station (Texas) Convention & Visitors Bureau.
He seldom fails to bring a flair for the dramatic to his upbeat briefings. Niedzielski-Eichner called the 30-minute Jan. 28 presentation a “tour-de-force, wonderful conversation.”
“Your work is very important to us,” Niedzielski-Eichner told Biggar.
Planning Commission members on March 11 will host a similar session with Victor Hoskins, who heads the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
