Fairfax Corner, the popular 1.1 million-square-foot, mixed-use development that opened in central Fairfax in 2003, is about to get a whole lot denser.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors decided Monday to let developer Peterson Cos. add more than 700,000 square feet of retail, office and residential space to the development.
Peterson’s proposed plans are flexible to allow it to respond to future market demand, but one version would triple Fairfax Corner’s existing commercial office space and double its residential space, according to Paul Weinschenk, vice president of retail for the company.
“Based on the success of Fairfax Corner, we wanted to increase the street-level retail there as well as add office, hotel and residential space to the project,” said Jeff Saxe, Peterson’s senior vice president for planning.
A previously planned hotel, which Weinschenk said he expects to be a Hyatt Place, will break ground in Fairfax Corner in early 2008 and should be open in 2009.
Peterson will build most of the new projects on top of the development’s scattered parking lots and bring parking underground — a tactic the company is also looking to employ to increase density at the nearby Fair Lakes development.
A proposed addition of 1.3 million square feet to the 7 million-square-foot Fair Lakes mixed-use development is still awaiting board approval.
Talk of expanding Metro’s orange line to include stops near both Fairfax Corner and Fair Lakes has halted as the county focuses on nailing down plans and funding for a new Silver Line out to Dulles Airport, but Saxe said Peterson is keeping the idea in mind.
“Our current development plans are over a 10-20-year time frame, and we’re hopeful that transit will be there by then,” he said.
