The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to allow a Metrorail control building — a squat, prefabricated, box-like structure — to be built in a residential Falls Church neighborhood despite strident opposition from residents. The board voted 6-4 to allow construction of the building even though the county planning commission recommended against it because, the commission said, the structure doesn’t fit the neighborhood’s character.
The board approved the project after the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority claimed that delaying construction of the control building would delay the opening of the Dulles Metrorail project by eight months, at a cost of $300,000 per day. The control building would allow workers to monitor the switching of trains from the Orange Line to the new Dulles line.
Supervisor John Foust, D-Dranesville, claimed MWAA was making false threats to get its way.
“[MWAA] is threatening us with bogus claims of huge damages if we don’t give them what they want,” Foust said. “It knows its land use argument is weak, so the applicant has resorted to creating a story about how affirming the planning commission’s decision will result in a massive delay to the Dulles Rail Project.”
The authority already had approval to construct the control building near Fisher Avenue and Great Falls Street in Falls Church, but said it discovered underground pipes on that site that would make construction difficult. It now will construct the control building south of Fisher Avenue, the site to which residents in the neighborhood objected.
“I sympathize that they are a residential neighborhood, but they are adjacent to a public site that has a public facility on it,” said Supervisor Cathy Hudgins, D-Hunter Mill, referring to a Metro power substation already located in the neighborhood.
