Circle Gateway

Project description

The project site consists of two parcels (48 3 08 002 B and 48 3 08 002 A) at 3226 and 3250 Blenheim Boulevard — a street that was formerly named Old Lee Highway — totaling 1.64 acres per the most recent project documents. The site currently contains two commercial buildings that were formerly occupied by Lotte Plaza and a 7-Eleven; as of the June 2026 pre-application briefing, those spaces were leased to HomeTrends and Class Design Cabinetry.

The proposal, as described in the June 5, 2026 pre-application briefing (the most authoritative and recent document reviewed), is an 11-story building with an overall height of approximately 118 feet 10 inches. It would contain 261 multifamily apartment homes dispersed on floors 4 through 10, of which 6% — equating to 16 units — would be designated as Affordable Dwelling Units. The ground floor would include 16,530 square feet of street-front retail. All units are rental tenure. The project's approval status is not confirmed in available documents.

A note on unit counts: the July 2022 conceptual plan listed 230 units; the June 2026 pre-application briefing and the city project directory both list 261 units. This analysis uses 261 units per the more recent document. A note on parking: the June 2026 document referenced 460 spaces, but this figure was not recovered verbatim from the documents during extraction and the parking count is therefore not carried as a confirmed project figure in this analysis.

Economic effects

New demand. Applying a stabilized occupancy rate of 0.95 (range 0.90–0.97) to 261 proposed units yields an estimated 234.9–253.2 new households, computed as proposed units multiplied by the occupancy rate. Multiplying those households by a persons-per-unit multiplier derived from Rutgers CUPR residential demographic multipliers (Listokin et al. 2006) for multifamily bedroom mixes yields an estimated 352–557 new residents (central 446). Aggregate annual household income of the new residents is estimated at $45.8 million–$61.7 million per year (central $54.4 million), computed as households multiplied by the mean income of site tract 51600300200 from ACS 5-year 2024 data ($195,124, sources B19025/B11001) multiplied by a new-construction income premium assumption.

Spending and cluster capture. New resident spending is estimated by multiplying households by BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 category figures, scaled by income-ratio elasticities (Engel scaling). The top spending categories by central estimate are: comparison retail (apparel and household furnishings), $1.7 million–$3.1 million per year; grocery, $1.5 million–$2.5 million per year; entertainment, $1.4 million–$2.6 million per year; and restaurants and bars, $1.4 million–$2.4 million per year.

Where spending lands — Huff capture by cluster. These figures are screening estimates. The Huff model used here is a joint destination-and-mode-choice model applied to individual retail points of interest; cluster totals are a reporting rollup. The model computes each destination's share of new-resident spending using a formula of the form P(j,m) proportional to attractiveness times a mode weight times a negative exponential of travel time. Results rank where new spending is likely to concentrate and show sensitivity bounds; they are not predictions. The top clusters by central annual capture estimate are:

• Fairchester Drive & Hill Street: $1,456,000–$2,243,000 per year (central $1,880,000), led by grocery and comparison retail
• Blenheim Boulevard & Fairfax Boulevard: $793,000–$2,069,000 per year (central $1,339,000), led by restaurants and bars
• Chain Bridge Road & North Street: $779,000–$1,340,000 per year (central $1,035,000), with a notable entertainment component

Additional clusters — Mathy Drive & Pickett Road ($531,000–$951,000) and Fair Lakes Parkway & Fair Oaks Mall ($466,000–$708,000) — capture a smaller share. The Huff model estimates that 57–62% of all new-resident retail spending and 62–70% of restaurant-and-bar spending would land at destinations inside the city boundary, computed as the share of Huff-model capture at points of interest within the city limits.

Project's own ground-floor retail. The 16,530 square feet of on-site retail competes as a destination in the same Huff run. Its estimated annual capture from new residents' spending is $41,000–$102,000 per year (central $71,724), composed of restaurants and bars, comparison retail, convenience retail, and personal services. This is a screening estimate subject to the same model assumptions as the cluster figures.

Foot-traffic index. The analysis estimates a foot-traffic index change of 0.1% on the 10 nearest commercial street segments. This figure is computed by allocating the new residents' modeled walk trips to street segments via exact shortest-path flows and comparing that increment to a sampled baseline betweenness index of today's population. No low/high range is published for this metric. This is a screening estimate: the baseline uses a seeded sampled betweenness index, not calibrated pedestrian counts.

Jobs. The existing commercial buildings have no on-site job estimate in project documents; the displacement figure is therefore computed as zero (existing commercial square footage divided by a square-footage-per-office-job assumption, with existing square footage not confirmed). The proposed 16,530 square feet of retail is estimated to support 23.6–41.3 on-site retail jobs (central 33.1), computed as proposed retail square footage divided by an assumed square footage per retail job. Net on-site job change is therefore estimated at 23.6–41.3 jobs (central 33.1).

Fiscal effects

Current tax. The two parcels currently generate $55,820 per year in real estate tax, computed as the current assessed value multiplied by the city real estate tax rate, drawn from the City of Fairfax Real Estate Assessment Database (Patriot WebPro, 2026) and the FY2027 adopted rate.

Projected assessed value and real estate tax. The projected assessed value is estimated at $97.2 million–$126.4 million (central $98.8 million), computed as proposed units multiplied by an assessed value per unit derived from three City of Fairfax apartment comparables built since 2011 (parcel 48 3 02 011 A: 400 units at $360,982/unit; parcel 57 1 02 031 C: 403 units at $359,599/unit; parcel 57 2 20 006 A: 268 units at $458,932/unit), plus proposed retail square footage multiplied by an assumed commercial assessed value per square foot, plus office square footage (not confirmed for this project) multiplied by an assumed office assessed value per square foot. Applied to the city real estate tax rate, the projected annual real estate tax is estimated at $1,042,000–$1,356,000 per year (central $1,059,000). The estimated real estate tax increase over the current site is $986,000–$1,300,000 per year (central $1,003,000), computed as projected minus current real estate tax.

Other recurring revenues. Several additional recurring revenue lines are estimated. Each carries significant assumption-driven uncertainty and several are explicitly rough estimates:

• Personal property tax on resident vehicles: $87,000–$376,000 per year (central $201,000), computed as new households multiplied by assumed vehicles per household, multiplied by an assumed average vehicle assessed value, multiplied by the city personal property tax rate. This is a rough estimate; vehicles per household and average vehicle value are assumptions, not observed data.
• BPOL business license tax on project retail: $1,218–$9,846 per year (central $3,924), computed as proposed retail square footage multiplied by an assumed gross sales per square foot, multiplied by the city BPOL retail rate, multiplied by a net-new share assumption, with an offset for resident spending that would be removed from other city businesses. This is a rough estimate.
• Business tangible personal property tax: $2,731–$10,240 per year (central $5,462), computed as proposed commercial square footage multiplied by an assumed equipment value per square foot, multiplied by the personal property tax rate. This is a rough estimate.
• Meals tax on captured in-city dining: $38,243–$76,252 per year (central $55,083), computed as estimated restaurant spending multiplied by the in-city capture share from the Huff model, multiplied by the city meals tax rate.
• Meals tax on the project's own restaurants (net-new): $8,223–$155,079 per year (central $44,147), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, multiplied by an assumed restaurant share of retail space, multiplied by the meals tax rate, multiplied by the net-new share. This is a rough estimate.
• Local sales tax share on captured in-city retail: $20,091–$37,637 per year (central $28,006), computed as in-city captured retail spending multiplied by the local sales tax share under Va. Code § 58.1-605.
• Local sales tax on the project's own retail (net-new): $6,091–$49,231 per year (central $19,621), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, multiplied by the local sales tax share, multiplied by the net-new share. This is a rough estimate.

Service costs. Two cost methods are presented; they differ in their treatment of which city expenditures scale with new residents.

The marginal-framing method treats only services that scale with new residents as incremental costs. Non-school per-capita cost is drawn from the FY2027 adopted General Fund budget ($207,912,496 total less $76,429,791 in school tuition, divided by 25,026 residents = $5,254 per capita), then multiplied by a marginal cost factor (central 0.35, range 0.25–0.55) reflecting that fixed-overhead services do not expand with infill development. School costs are handled separately: estimated K-12 students of 13–31 (central 21), computed as proposed units multiplied by an assumed students-per-unit rate drawn from Rutgers CUPR high-rise multifamily multipliers, are multiplied by the net local cost per pupil ($19,961, computed from the FY2027 FCPS tuition contract of $76,429,791 less $14,492,271 in state education revenue, divided by 3,103 students). The resulting annual school cost component is estimated at $260,000–$625,000 (central $417,000). Total marginal-framing service cost is estimated at $723,000–$2,235,000 per year (central $1,237,000).

The marginal framing may understate costs if the project triggers a service-capacity expansion; the marginal cost factor's range (0.25–0.55) is the primary vehicle for carrying that uncertainty.

Net fiscal impact. Under the marginal framing, the estimated net annual fiscal impact — incremental recurring revenues minus service costs that scale with new residents — is −$1,084,000 to +$1,291,000 per year (central approximately +$123,000). The real estate tax increase is the single largest revenue driver. The range crosses zero, meaning that under plausible assumptions the project could be a net positive or a net negative to the city's recurring budget. The primary sources of this uncertainty are the marginal cost factor, the household size assumption (which scales both residents and associated costs), and the student-generation rate.

No external fiscal estimates were published by the applicant or city staff in the documents reviewed for this analysis; no comparison to external estimates is therefore possible.

Not evaluated in this version

Analyses of the proposed bicycle-lane corridor, trail connectivity, broader multimodal network effects, environmental impacts (stormwater, urban heat, tree canopy), and comparable-places benchmarking against similar mixed-use projects in peer jurisdictions were not computed in this version and are deferred to subsequent analysis phases.