Fairfax Resident Faces Prison for Unruly Airplane Behavior — “Last week, Kameron C. Stone, 30, of Fairfax, Virginia, was sentenced to one year in federal prison for interfering with flight crew and assault by striking and wounding in special aircraft jurisdiction after pleading guilty on February 8, 2022.” [Department of Justice]

Vienna Crash Leads to Power Outage and Evacuations — “According to a Town of Vienna alert, a traffic crash resulted in live, downed wires in the area of Cottage and Elm Streets. Homes on Elm Street from Cottage to Plum Streets and Cottage Street from Cherry to Battle Streets were evacuated due to the potential for fire, according to the town.” [Patch]

West Falls Project to Break Ground — “Developers are expected to break ground this month on the first of three mixed-use projects near the West Falls Church Metro station with a total investment of about $1.2 billion…Falls Church’s George Mason High School was demolished and replaced by the nearby Meridian High School to make way for the first development, which is scheduled to break ground in mid-May.” [Virginia Business]

Fairfax County Among Healthiest in Virginia — “According to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute 2022 County Health Rankings report, Fairfax County is ranked the fourth healthiest county out of 133 in the commonwealth. Falls Church City ranks as the healthiest locality, while Fairfax City ranks as 13th in healthiest outcomes.” [Fairfax County Health Department]

Unemployment Numbers Decline — “Fairfax County’s jobless rate ticked down slightly from February to March, among ongoing if incremental improvement from pandemic highs of 2020…the unemployment rate of 2.3 percent was down from 2.5 percent in February and well below the rate of 4.1 percent recorded a year ago.” [Sun Gazette/Inside NoVA]

Reston Farmers Market Reaches 25 Years — “One of the people on hand for the opening of the 2022 season was Del. Ken Plum (D-42nd), who has represented Reston in the Virginia House of Delegates for 42 years. Plum and Reston founder Robert E. Simon were on hand 25 years ago for the opening of the first farmers market at Lake Anne Village.” [Patch]

Fairfax County Libraries Celebrate Star Wars Day — Tomorrow (Wednesday) is May 4, and Fairfax County Public Library will let kids and kids at heart indulge their love for the still-ubiquitous space opera with a variety of activities, from origami Yoda at Tysons-Pimmit to an R2D2 photo op in Sherwood. Most events are open to all, though two that require registration have filled up. [FCPL]

It’s Tuesday — Rain overnight. High of 74 and low of 56. Sunrise at 6:10 am and sunset at 8:04 pm. [Weather.gov]

Plans for the massive development in the West Falls Church Metro station area were revised to provide new details on three of the project’s five buildings.

Known as FGCP-Metro LLC, developers EYA, Rushmark Properties, and Hoffman & Associates have partnered with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to build more than 1 million square feet of residential, office and retail space on 24 acres of land currently occupied by parking.

The developer group previously filed a plan with the county in December, but that was later withdrawn in favor of the new rezoning application, dated March 10.

“There are no material changes to the proposed application,” Walsh, Colucci, Lubeley & Walsh attorney Andrew Painter, who represents the developers, told FFXnow. “It was refiled to incorporate the entirety of the site into a single Final Development Plan (rather than multiple Final Development Plans) for ease of administrative review.”

Envisioned as part of a 60-acre neighborhood that includes Falls Church City’s West Falls project and Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia Center campus, Metro’s development will have 900 residential units, a 110,000-square-foot office building, and up to 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

The new application includes three buildings that weren’t detailed in the previously submitted plan:

• Building A: A 120-foot-tall multifamily residential building with a maximum of 130,000 square feet of gross floor area and 210 residential units. It may include any remaining approved residential units not provided in other buildings.
• Building B: The office and retail space will be in this building, which will have a maximum height of 120 feet
• Building F: A 90-foot-tall multifamily residential building with up to 265,000 square feet of gross floor area and 280 residential units. It will face a proposed Metro Plaza and have a private, interior courtyard for residents as well as wayfinding elements for the Metro station.

Because these buildings haven’t been fully designed yet, the final development plan will need to be amended in the future, assuming it is approved, according to a statement of justification from Painter. Read More