The Dulles Corridor, a 23-mile stretch of land from the Washington Beltway to beyond Dulles International Airport, will be the center of phenomenal growth over the next 2 1/2 decades, creating from 200,000 to 300,000 new jobs overall and some 45,000 new households in Fairfax County alone, according to projections by George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis.
The corridor — which follows the Dulles Toll Road in Fairfax County past Dulles airport to Leesburg in Loudoun County — is expected to account for some 20 percent of the entire region’s growth over the next 25 years, according to CRA projections. The job growth alone is double that projected for the District of Columbia.
“The Dulles Corridor is probably the hottest corridor in the region. If you developed the Dulles Corridor at the densities in the Rosslyn/Ballston corridor, you could put a whole lot more growth in,” John McClain, an economist for the Center, told The Examiner.
Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech’s Urban Affairs and Planning Department, said the corridor “is going to be the [Washington] metro area’s single largest growth machine of the next generation.”
Key to the development, he said, would be the new Metrorail connections out to Tysons Corner, Dulles Airport and beyond. “The rail will be needed to facilitate the growth and make it much more productive economically.”
There are about 488,000 jobs in the Dulles Corridor, a number that is expected to jump by 46 percent to 710,000 by 2030. Projections for the Corridor include new jobs in Loudoun County’s section, which extends along the Dulles Greenway and Route 28. But much of the anticipated job growth will be in Fairfax County, with more than 150,000 new jobs expected to be concentrated around developments near Metro stations planned in Tysons, Herndon and Reston.
The total number of jobs in the Corridor could surge to 805,000 if development around the 11 future Metro stations in Fairfax and Loudoun counties goes as planned, McClain said.
And all those new employees will need places to live. Fairfax expects to add about 45,000 households along the Corridor in the next 25 years.
“You’ve got high-quality jobs in that corridor,” McClain said. “So you not only have job growth, but you’ve got the kind of job growth that makes a lot of money and that’s going to bring more demand for housing.”
“Metro can accommodate those jobs. Without Metro, the sprawl will get worse and the trips for everybody will get worse,” said Virginia Del. Jim Scott, D-Fairfax, interim chair of the Tysons Land Use Task Force. “It’s not a question of growth, because jobs are coming. It’s where we can channel it around.”
What has made these projections so astounding is that until the 1970s, the area between Dulles, built in 1962, and the Beltway was rural and little-known.
“We were the boonies. We were very rural. Tysons Corner used to have a general store on one side and a frozen meat locker on the other,” said Lawrence, a Fairfax County planning commissioner and longtime Dulles-area resident. “I used to drive down [Route] 123 many, many years ago and look at cows where the Gallerias are now.”
But that was before the Toll Road between the Beltway and the airport was built in 1984 and ignited development outside the Beltway. It was before the federal government began “outsourcing” thousands of functions, fueling growth among contractors. And it was before hungry developers started planning a whole new look for the Dulles Corridor in anticipation of Metro finally making its way out to the airport.
The Dulles Corridor — which in Fairfax County runs along the Dulles Toll Road and is bordered by Route 7 to the north, Route 50 to the south, the Beltway to the east and the airport to the west — is supercharged by its accessibility, McClain said.
“The Corridor has some development advantages in that you have reasonably good road infrastructure in place, although overtaxed,” he said. There are Washington and the “Beltway at one end of the corridor and an international airport at the other end with a lot of capacity for expansion.”
Growth Forecast for the Washington Region
The Dulles Corridor will account for 20 percent of the region’s total job growth over the next 25 years.
Dulles corridor
» Current jobs in the Dulles Corridor: 488,000
» Projected number of jobs in 2030: 710,000
» Percent increase: 45.5
The District
» Current jobs in the District: 672,400
» Projected number of jobs in 2030: 787,400
» Percent increase: 17.1
Washington region
» Current jobs in the entire Washington region: 3.05 million
» Projected number of jobs in 2030: 4.237 million
» Percent increase: 38.9
Sources: George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis, Washington, D.C., Economic Partnership
Who lives and works in the Dulles Corridor?
» In Fairfax, growth along the Dulles Corridor is concentrated in Tysons Corner, Reston and Herndon.
Tysons
» Jobs in the technology sector account for 21,012, or 31.6 percent, of all jobs and 766, or 20.2 percent, of all companies.
» The medianhousehold income ranges from $70,806 to $120,075.
Reston-Herndon
» Jobs in the technology sector account for 20,015, or 48.4 percent, of all jobs and 736, or 29.6 percent, of all companies.
» The median household income ranges from $65,994 to $102,577.
Source: Fairfax County Economic Development Authority
