Annandale’s Eastgate Shopping Center is closer to getting an apartment building.

During a meeting on Tuesday (Oct. 24), the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a plan from developer Eastgate JV LLC to allow residential development on the 11.8-acre property at the corner of Little River Turnpike and John Marr Drive.

The new building will be six stories tall and include 280 multifamily units, along with 11,220 square feet of commercial retail on the ground floor. The application also proposed adding 23,858 square feet of new, on-site urban park spaces.

There were no public comments on the plan, but Scott Adams, a lawyer representing the project developer, told the Board of Supervisors they think the development will be an asset to the community.

“It’s also something where we think it’s going to spur additional revitalization in the area,” he said.

The construction will take over the space currently occupied by The Block, a popular food hall. Adams said at an Oct. 11 planning commission public hearing that there are plans to retain The Block in some form.

The Board of Supervisors also approved the developer’s request to reduce parking requirements to 1.34 spaces per apartment unit — a 16% reduction from the county’s current requirement of 1.6 spaces per unit.

Adams said the redevelopment has a focus on creating “a safe and inviting pedestrian environment.”

“So we’ve removed a turn lane on John Marr Drive [and] provided wildlife landscape amenity panels on both sides of the 10-foot mixed-use trail,” he said.

A nearby bus stop on John Marr Drive will also be upgraded with a bus shelter and ADA-accessible pad.

Anchored until 2018 by K-Mart, which got replaced by K Market International, the Eastgate Shopping Center is home to several restaurants and grocery stores. Although the planning commission recommended the board approve the plan earlier this month, some members warned against the gentrification of the area’s retail and restaurants.

Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross said she was happy to see the plans becoming a reality.

“The original idea was a mixed-use town center in phases and now, 15 years later, the first phase is coming to fruition,” Gross said.

Fairfax County is considering renaming its community center in Bailey’s Crossroads after a mid-20th-century pillar of the Black community.

At a Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday (Tuesday), its first since July, retiring Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross proposed looking into renaming the decades-old Bailey’s Community Center after Minnie Peyton.

Peyton was the well-known matriarch of Springdale, a historically Black community in Bailey’s Crossroads that originated as a home to freedmen after the Civil War.

Peyton founded several local churches and donated land to the county, specifically for an elementary school for Black students. When the school was completed in 1956, per county tax records, Fairfax County was still segregating Black and white students.

Today, the land once occupied by the school is the site of Bailey’s Community Center and Higher Horizons Head Start Program, an early education facility founded in 1963.

Naming the community center after Peyton would be a fitting acknowledgment of her role in the area’s history, Gross said in a board matter.

The Springdale community in Bailey’s Crossroads had its beginnings as home to freedmen following the Civil War, and has nurtured hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families in the last century-and-a-half. As with many traditional Black communities, the residents erected a church and built a small elementary school to educate their children, but the neighborhood received few local services – no paved roads, no sidewalks, no public drinking water or wastewater infrastructure. There is a growing desire in the community to re-name the community center to honor Minnie Peyton and reflect its historic roots.

While advocating for the change, Gross acknowledged that “more research needs to be done” and requested that the Fairfax County History Commission “verify available documentation” before the switch.

Gross gave the commission a deadline of next summer to report its findings.

The Board of Supervisors approved the request unanimously, though no date or timeline was given on when the community center’s name might actually change.

This isn’t the only county community center to undergo a name change recently. In July, the Board officially approved renaming the Providence Community Center as the Jim Scott Community Center.

Scott was a former supervisor and represented the county in the Virginia House of Delegates for over two decades. He was most known for advocating for the state’s “motor voter” law, which allowed people to register to vote at DMVs, employment centers, and welfare offices. He died in 2017.

A renaming ceremony for the community center in Oakton will be held on Sept. 30.

Construction is well underway on Annandale’s new civic space, but it will take a little more money to bring Fairfax County’s full vision to fruition.

The cost of the project, which will turn a parking lot at 7200 Columbia Pike into an urban park, has exceeded the available funding, leading to some elements getting revised or eliminated, Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross told the Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tuesday).

Gross requested that the county consider providing an additional $100,000 so those elements, including lighting and parking lot changes, can be reincorporated.

“While the project could be completed as-is, I believe strongly that the inclusion of certain design elements…would position the park for greater visitor safety and long-term success,” Gross said. “Pursuit of these elements during a subsequent phase of construction would contribute positively to the park’s visibility, connectivity, and ability to serve as an anchor for civic connection in an important revitalization area.”

In the works since 2018, the Annandale Civic Space will transform the county-owned site with a plaza, a green lawn with a “topography” playground, an educational garden and an accessible walkway linking Daniels Avenue to Columbia Pike.

Currently, construction is on track to finish this fall, according to the Department of Planning and Development’s community revitalization section.

Initially, the county estimated a “ballpark cost” of $600,000 to $650,000, DPD staff said at a community meeting in 2021. However, by the time construction began this past March, the total estimate had grown to $700,000, according to the DPD’s project page.

Lighting along the walkway through the park and enhancements to the parking lot shown in the final design concept in 2019 were dropped from an updated rendering approved in July 2022.

If approved, the additional funding will primarily go toward realizing the county’s vision of the parking lot as a pop-up programming and events space, according to Gross.

“As the project evolved, designers saw an opportunity to utilize excess parking lot surface by shifting some of the parking spaces to install a more direct sidewalk construction and landscaping panel from the plaza area to the public sidewalk along Columbia Pike,” she told FFXnow. “Funds for Phase 2 also would implement the envisioned catenary lighting, reseal and repaint the parking lot, and install bollards around the refuse collection pad to ensure the bins remain in their proper location.”

During business hours, the lot is expected to provide parking for the Annandale Christian Community for Action (ACCA) Child Development Center, which operates out of the former Annandale Elementary School building on the site.

Gross said the project has “required creativity and flexibility,” including when it came to financing. Since 2020, the county has assembled funds for construction from a variety of sources, including a $363,250 environmental improvement program grant and Economic Opportunity Reserve funds.

At Gross’s request, the project will now be considered for funding from the county’s fiscal year 2023 carryover review, an annual process that allocates any leftover money from the previous fiscal year.

The county’s fiscal year ends on June 30, so the Board of Supervisors typically approves the carryover package in the fall.

Fairfax County is restarting and opting into a statewide program that helps commercial properties with financing for energy efficiency and resiliency improvements.

Last week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the amending and re-adoption of the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy and Resiliency (C-PACE) program, which aims to assist commercial building owners with energy and water-saving improvements for little to no upfront costs.

The county first established its own program in 2019, the first in the state to include resiliency projects that address high wind, extreme temperature and flood risks. But in the four years since, no contracts have been executed, and no projects have been completed under the program.

C-PACE is intended as a financial tool designed to “provide long-term private funding to [commercial] building owners for energy-saving and water-saving projects,” according to the county website.

A C-PACE loan is intended to be easier for the property owner to pay off, acting director of the county’s Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination (OEEC) John Morrill told FFXnow in an email.

“The intent of the energy improvements financed through a C-PACE loan is to reduce the operating costs of a property, thereby putting the property owner in a better financial position to pay off all loans,” Morrill said.

He said C-PACE “has struggled to gain traction” because of a confusing process, lack of understanding of the financial product, and the “reluctance” of first-lien debt holders to give up being first to be paid back.

At the meeting, several supervisors expressed their disappointment in the county program so far, voting unanimously to instead opt into a statewide program created in late 2021.

“It’s obviously disappointing that…we adopted a program that has not been used,” Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust said. “I think the step that you are taking us on, with aligning us with the state program, is a very positive change that could help make it more popular.”

Opting into Virginia’s version of C-PACE provides the county with two main benefits, the staff report notes. One, it relieves individual localities from procuring, administrating, and managing contracts.

“Under the statewide program, [the Virginia Department of Energy] is solely responsible for the solicitation of bids, selection of a program administrator, and contract administration,” the report says.

Secondly, it standardizes the program across jurisdictions and provides more support for messaging, engagement, and public awareness. It will also expand the types of projects eligible for loans to include stormwater management and electric vehicle infrastructure.

Morrill said the county hopes partnering with the state will help solve the challenges that the program has faced.

By standardizing application documents in the state program, attorney fees and other transaction costs for completing loans will be less expensive through the state program and result in less friction for getting deals completed. In addition, Fairfax County will work with the state energy office and C-PACE program administrator to promote the availability of C-PACE financing in order to help the market better understand this financial product. As for concern about losing first lien status, we hope consistent marketing and promotion of the program with some success stories will help give lenders confidence that C-PACE can be successful in Virginia, just as it has been in several other states.

But the county had similarly high hopes when it launched C-PACE years ago.

Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross recalled a luncheon in 2018 where the county introduced the program to local business owners. The room was full of excitement that appeared to have nothing to do with the free lunch, she said. But when the program was enacted and the application period opened, the excitement seemingly dissipated.

“I thought we’d sit back and watch the applications roll in, and nothing happened,” Gross said. “It was a great disappointment for those who worked on C-PACE.”

The county hopes local commercial business owners will now become aware of the program and its ability to provide financial help to make climate-friendly changes.

“Now there appears there is a pathway to actually make C-PACE work,” Gross said. “I’m glad the Commonwealth has determined that [the program] really needs the state to come in and assist with this.”