The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved the redevelopment of a nearly vacant Fair Oaks office building as an apartment community.
The vote on Tuesday (March 3) rezoned the 6.2-acre site at 3877 Fairfax Ridge Road from commercial to a PRM (planned residential/mixed) district, setting the stage for the property owner, Time Equities, to move forward with a site plan application.
The existing, four-story High Ridge office building dates to the 1980s and will be torn down to allow for a 400-unit, six-story apartment complex with small ground-floor retail uses.
The parcel is bounded by Fairfax Ridge and Waples Mill roads, near the I-66 and Route 50 interchange just outside Fairfax City.
Though that part of Fair Oaks was designated by the county in the 1970s-1980s as a hub for office buildings, most of the surrounding properties ended up being residential. As a result, the new housing will be “more compatible with the area,” said Lynne Strobel, a land-use attorney representing the developer.
First submitted a year ago, the development plan has undergone changes since then.
“We worked to reduce the bulk and the mass,” Strobel told supervisors. “We came to a really good place.”
Throughout the development process, concerns have been raised by the neighboring, 420-unit Fairfax Ridge Condominiums, largely about traffic and parking concerns during construction.
Tolkunbek Abdygulov, acting president of the Fairfax Ridge homeowners’ association, said parking already is “a disaster” but predicted it would get worse during construction. His comments were echoed by Isabel Ramos-Toral, the organization’s treasurer.
Representatives of the developer said efforts are ongoing to work with neighboring complexes and find ways to address areas of concern.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said he hopes that will be the case, saying neighboring residents “have been consistent since Day One on what their issues are.”
“We will continue to monitor that,” McKay said.
The new property will have 540 parking spaces available in an above-ground parking garage that will be retained from the office building.
In addition, the developer has access to 275 parking spaces at the nearby Radiant Fairfax Ridge apartments. The total combined parking count of 715 spaces equates to 1.74 per unit.
A total of 1.3 acres of the parcel will be designated open space. It will feature active and passive uses, mostly as a linear park fronting Waples Mill Road, and will be accessible to the public.
The two small retail outlets, totaling about 5,000 square feet, are designed to serve residents of the building and its immediate neighbors, Strobel said.
Strobel told supervisors it was expected the properties would be rentals, but did not rule out condominiums as an option.
Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, in whose district the parcel sits, said he was “very excited to see this project move forward,” given that the site “has run its course as an office building.”
County staff and the planning commission concurred in that assessment, both recommending that the board approve the redevelopment plan.
Time Equities acquired the site in 2019 from the Midland National Life Insurance Company for $11.2 million. The selling price was just one-third of the over $33 million that Midland paid in 2016 and was down from about $44.3 million the property sold for in 2006, according to county property records.
The 2026 assessed value of the office building and land is just under $2.3 million, largely owing to the low occupancy rate that has caused the assessed value of the building to drop about 90% to slightly more than $1 million.
Redevelopment of 3877 Fairfax Ridge Road is not the only change coming to the vicinity.
Peterson Companies has proposed razing the 11 office buildings currently on the 22-acre Fair Oaks Business Park site near the intersection of Waples Mill Road and Pender Drive. They would be replaced by a pair of multifamily apartment buildings totaling 420 units, along with 286 stacked townhomes.
The county board approved an amendment to the comprehensive plan last November, the first step toward ultimate approval of the Peterson redevelopment proposal. The Fair Oaks Business Park rezoning application remains under staff review with a public hearing before the Fairfax County Planning Commission scheduled for March 11.
