Two office buildings on the Fair Oaks Mall campus have changed hands in a $12.5 million deal that their new owners hope will jumpstart a revitalization.
The commercial real estate firm Silverline Equities announced Tuesday (June 16) that it has acquired Greenwood Plaza and Oakwood Center buildings at 12015 and 11781 Route 50.
Silverline simultaneously sold the latter — a seven-story building whose current occupants include a Wells Fargo bank — to JR Real Estate Group, which it says is better equipped to position the property for a future residential redevelopment.
“This complex acquisition demonstrates Silverline’s breadth of capital sources and transactional experience,” Silverline co-founder Anthony Chang said in a press release. “The leasing market has already responded very favorably to our willingness to offer market-rate terms. These buildings are once again open for business!”
Fairfax-based JR Real Estate, which specializes in acquiring land for home builders, will continue to support Oakwood’s tenants for now as it pursues planning and zoning approvals “that will allow this site to reach its full potential,” according to the company’s managing principal, Saif Raiman.
“Oakwood sits at the heart of one of Northern Virginia’s most promising mixed-use corridors,” Raiman said in the release. “We see tremendous long-term value in this location, particularly as the reimagining of Fair Oaks Mall takes shape.”
Raiman told the Washington Business Journal that the future development plans will likely be involve multifamily housing with “an affordable component.”
The eight-story Greenwood Plaza building, meanwhile, is expected to remain dedicated to commercial offices. Its largest tenant, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, renewed a lease for over 70,000 square feet before the acquisition deal closed, Silverline says.
County departments in the building include the Infant and Toddler Connection of Fairfax and Falls Church. The program, which provides evaluations and intervention services for developmental delays, opened a temporary facility in Suite 200 in June 2024 in anticipation of an overhaul of the Joseph Willard Health Center in Fairfax City, a project that still hasn’t started construction.
Chang told FFXnow that the county is expanding its space in Greenwood to support the growth of its Retirement Systems, which manages benefit systems for current and retired local government employees.
According a Fairfax County spokesperson, the Retirement Systems office is moving from Suite 350 to a new, larger suite on the office building’s eighth floor, but the overall amount of leased space will remain the same.
“Fairfax County Government has leased space in the Greenwood office building since 2016. The county currently leases 71,973 square feet and has no plans to lease additional space,” the county spokesperson said. “… Once the Retirement Systems office moves floors, the county will no longer lease Suite 350.”
Constructed in 1982 and 1985, respectively, Oakwood and Greenwood were previously owned by a joint venture of Brandywine Real Estate Trust and Perennial Investments & Advisors, according to the Washington Business Journal.
Fairfax County property records show that Brandywine shuffled the buildings around a couple of times between different subsidiaries over the past few decades: first selling for a combined $89.5 million in 1998, then for $107.2 million in 2001 and most recently, $5.7 million on Sept. 15, 2017.
Elevated vacancy rates and declining demand for older office properties has been a persistent concern for Fairfax County over the past decade, leading local officials to explore options for encouraging buildings to be repurposed or redeveloped, often as housing.
In recent months, the Board of Supervisors has approved rezonings for the High Ridge office building and 11 buildings in the Fair Oaks Business Park to allow residential development. Developers have also reportedly shown interest in replacing the National Rifle Association’s headquarters building on Waples Mill Road with mixed-use or assisted living projects, though no official proposals have been submitted.
With development patterns shifting, the county has spent more than a decade now studying the Fairfax Center area, which includes Fair Oaks, to determine whether to allow more residential uses and plan for future transportation and community needs.
