The Herndon Town Council has cleared the way for a redevelopment of the Van Buren Office Park.
The council voted unanimously last month (June 23) to approve a zoning map amendment allowing the office park at 250 Exchange Place to be converted from office and light-industrial uses to a mixed-use community with residential and commercial space.
Property owner Rooney Properties plans to replace the approximately 9.4-acre site’s five office buildings and surface parking with a 400-unit multifamily apartment building, a parking garage and 62 townhouse units.
When presenting the proposal to the town council, Deputy Director of Community Development Bryce Perry noted that the development application was the first submitted to the town under its Transit-Related Growth Area (TRG) plan, adopted in 2024.
Spanning roughly 94 acres along Herndon Parkway, the TRG is intended to serve as a buffer between the denser Herndon Transit-oriented Core (HTOC) around the Herndon Metro station and the established neighborhoods to the north.
Rooney’s project involves a three-phased plan and includes demolishing existing structures, constructing two new public streets, and creating two publicly accessible parks.
“So, there’s landscaping, and there’s lots of surface parking, and there’s five office buildings there today, which total a little over 108,000 square feet of gross floor area,” Perry said, noting that all of the space is needed to accommodate the development.
Phase one involves the demolition, street installation and relocation of major utilities like the sanitary line, water line and storm sewer line. The following phases include building out the stacked townhouses and then the multifamily building.
A traffic impact study showed potential increases in minor delays and queuing at the studied intersections, which Perry characterized as expected for this kind of development.
Additionally, a fiscal analysis showed the development could significantly boost the town’s real estate tax revenue. Currently, the site brings in roughly $28,000 a year, but town officials estimate that number could increase to $505,000 annually.
During the meeting’s public comment period, Herndon Town Council candidate Yasmin Shafiq expressed disappointment that the proposal doesn’t include affordable housing, even though the council adopted a resolution earlier this year supporting affordable housing.
“It would be a missed opportunity to not incorporate affordable housing into almost 500 new units in total,” Shafiq said.
Mayor Kevin LeBlanc noted that the project was not subject to the town’s affordable housing resolution because it was already too far along in the development process when the resolution was adopted in March.
With the development plan now approved, construction could start in 2027, a land use attorney representing Rooney Properties said.
