Fairfax Square

Project description

The site consists of three tax parcels — 58-3-02-013C, 58-3-02-013A, and 48-3-14-002B — with a stated area of 10.47 acres located at the end of Burke Station Road in the City of Fairfax, Virginia. The project is currently under review.

Existing condition. Twelve existing commercial buildings comprising 126,535 square feet are present on the site, accommodating a variety of uses including office, medical, personal services, retail, and church uses. There are no existing residential units. No current assessed value for the parcels was available at a confidence level sufficient to use in this analysis; the current real estate tax figure is drawn directly from the City's assessment database.

Proposed condition. The applicant proposes a redevelopment that would deliver 138 total residential units across the property — described in the most recent formal submission documents as 90 multifamily units and 48 single-family attached units — of which a minimum of 11 units are committed as affordable at 60% of Area Median Income, to be constructed within the first multifamily building. The non-residential program consists of up to 59,000 square feet of new commercial uses in new buildings and the retention of 70,906 square feet of office and commercial space in two existing buildings, including the existing five-story office building at 9900 Main Street. New commercial buildings are described in the Statement of Support as one- and two-story structures. Residential tenure is not established in the project documents; rental defaults are used throughout this analysis. Parking space counts are not established at sufficient confidence to report.

Note on document versions: Earlier pre-application materials (the Briefing Submission) described a substantially different program of approximately 293–300 multifamily units and 44 affordable units. The figures used throughout this report are drawn from the later, more authoritative formal submission documents (Statement of Support and Draft Commitments), which govern the current application as filed.

Economic effects

New demand. Under the occupancy and household-size assumptions described above, the 138 proposed units are projected to yield 124–134 occupied households (central: 131) and 186–294 new residents (central: 236), applying the method of multiplying households by Rutgers CUPR bedroom-mix persons-per-unit multipliers for multifamily. Those households are estimated to generate aggregate annual income of $20.3 million–$27.4 million (central: ~$24.2 million), computed as households multiplied by the mean income of site tract 51600300300 from ACS 5-year 2024 data ($163,796) and a new-construction income premium.

Spending by category. Applying BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 figures scaled by income and per-category Engel elasticities, new-resident annual spending is estimated across six categories: grocery ($745,735–$1,202,271, central ~$976,485); restaurants and bars ($622,041–$1,096,480, central ~$853,809); comparison retail ($771,096–$1,389,891, central ~$1,070,940); convenience retail ($133,409–$222,402, central ~$177,803); personal services ($178,162–$317,572, central ~$245,988); and entertainment ($632,276–$1,165,387, central ~$888,544).

Where spending is captured — retail clusters. These capture figures are screening estimates. They are computed using a Huff model over individual retail points of interest, in which each destination's probability of capture is proportional to its attractiveness and inversely proportional to a walk- and drive-time decay function. Clusters are a reporting rollup of those individual POI-level results. The model identifies the following as the top destinations for new-resident spending:

1. Fairchester Drive & Hill Street — central capture ~$999,812/yr (range $758,733–$1,192,733), led by grocery spending in that cluster.
2. Chain Bridge Road & North Street — central capture ~$683,359/yr (range $492,190–$944,415), with a notable entertainment component.
3. Mathy Drive & Pickett Road — central capture ~$390,836/yr (range $279,019–$582,409).
4. Fair Lakes Parkway & Fair Oaks Mall — central capture ~$304,770/yr (range $223,254–$351,598), dominated by comparison retail.
5. Blenheim Boulevard & Fairfax Boulevard — central capture ~$192,599/yr (range $143,143–$272,069).

The Huff model also estimates that 62.0%–66.5% (central: ~62.0%) of all new-resident retail spending and 64.1%–73.0% (central: ~66.4%) of food-away-from-home spending lands at destinations inside the city boundary, computed as the share of Huff-modeled capture at destinations within the city.

Project's own retail capture. This figure is a screening estimate. The project's proposed ground-floor commercial space (up to 59,000 square feet new, plus the retained space) competes as a destination in the same Huff model. New-resident spending captured by the project's own ground-floor retail is estimated at $75,767–$211,694 per year (central: ~$139,781), with restaurants and bars as the largest component, followed by convenience retail and comparison retail.

Foot-traffic. This figure is a screening estimate. Exact marginal trip flows from the site — modeled using POI-weighted destinations and walk-time decay along the OpenStreetMap network — yield an estimated foot-traffic index change of +0.2% on the 10 nearest commercial street segments, measured against a seeded sampled betweenness baseline of today's population. This is not a calibrated pedestrian count comparison. Walk-arriving spending at the project's own retail is estimated at $23,218–$148,151 per year (central: ~$70,232), and new annual spending arriving on foot across all destinations is estimated at $27,927–$1,184,579 (central: ~$141,662); the wide range on the latter reflects the sensitivity of walk-mode share assumptions (beta_walk: 0.05–0.15; walk_share_neighborhood: 0.4–0.8).

Jobs ledger. Using a sqft-per-job conversion method applied to the respective square footages, the analysis estimates the following on-site job changes:

• Jobs removed (existing 126,535 sq ft / sqft-per-office-job): 253–506 jobs (central: ~362), computed as existing commercial square footage divided by sqft-per-office-job.
• Retail jobs added (proposed 59,000 sq ft / sqft-per-retail-job): 84–148 jobs (central: 118), computed as proposed retail square footage divided by sqft-per-retail-job.
• Office jobs added (retained 70,906 sq ft / sqft-per-office-job): 142–284 jobs (central: ~203), computed as proposed office square footage divided by sqft-per-office-job.
• Net on-site job change (retail added + office added − existing removed): −280 to +178 jobs (central: approximately −41).

The net job range spans negative to positive because the sqft-per-job assumption applies to both the removed and retained/new space, and its range (250–500 sq ft per office job; 400–700 sq ft per retail job) is wide enough to change the sign of the net result. The existing buildings being removed are noted as older and potentially part-vacant, which may support a higher sqft-per-worker ratio than modern occupied fit-out.

Fiscal effects

Current real estate tax. The three subject parcels currently generate $230,412 per year in real estate tax revenue, computed as current assessed value multiplied by the City's real estate tax rate.

Projected real estate tax. Post-redevelopment assessed value is projected at $75,605,897–$118,840,380 (central: ~$87,312,385), computed as proposed units multiplied by assessed value per unit (based on three City apartment comparables built since 2011: $359,599–$458,932 per unit), plus proposed retail square footage multiplied by a commercial assessed value per square foot ($200–$400/sq ft, central $275), plus proposed office square footage multiplied by an office assessed value per square foot ($200–$450/sq ft, central $300). Projected real estate tax on the redeveloped site is $810,873–$1,274,563 per year (central: ~$936,425), producing a real estate tax increase of $580,462–$1,044,151 per year (central: ~$706,014) over the current tax, computed as projected minus current real estate tax.

Other recurring revenue lines. Several additional revenue streams are estimated, with the rougher estimates noted:

• Personal property tax on resident vehicles (rough estimate): $46,165–$199,023/yr (central: ~$106,123), computed as new households multiplied by assumed vehicles per household (1.0–1.8, central 1.4) multiplied by assumed average vehicle assessed value ($9,000–$20,000, central $14,000) multiplied by the City's personal property tax rate. No project-specific vehicle data exists; treat as order-of-magnitude.
• BPOL business license tax on project retail (rough estimate): $4,383–$35,260/yr (central: ~$14,076), computed as proposed retail square footage multiplied by assumed gross sales per square foot ($250–$600, central $400) multiplied by the BPOL retail rate, multiplied by a net-new share (0.15–0.50, central 0.30) to avoid double-counting sales displaced from existing city businesses.
• BPOL business license tax on project office (rough estimate): $85,087–$226,899/yr (central: ~$141,812), computed as proposed office square footage multiplied by assumed gross receipts per square foot ($300–$800, central $500) multiplied by the BPOL professional rate. This line is not displacement-adjusted, as professional and medical practices are assumed to serve regional demand.
• Business tangible property tax (rough estimate): $21,460–$80,477/yr (central: ~$42,921), computed as proposed commercial square footage multiplied by assumed equipment value per square foot ($4–$15, central $8) multiplied by the City's personal property tax rate.
• Meals tax on captured in-city dining: $17,940–$36,031/yr (central: ~$25,513), computed as new-resident restaurant spending multiplied by the in-city Huff capture share and the City meals tax rate.
• Meals tax on the project's own restaurants (rough estimate, net-new): $29,586–$555,348/yr (central: ~$158,356), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, multiplied by an assumed restaurant share of retail (0.3–0.7, central 0.5), the meals tax rate, and the net-new share. The wide range reflects the stacked sensitivity of sales-per-sqft, restaurant-share, and net-new-share assumptions.
• Local sales tax share on captured in-city retail: $10,004–$18,714/yr (central: ~$13,800), computed as in-city captured retail spending multiplied by the local sales tax share under Virginia Code § 58.1-605.
• Local sales tax on the project's own retail (rough estimate, net-new): $21,915–$176,301/yr (central: ~$70,381), computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, the local sales tax share, and the net-new share.

Service costs and the two framing methods. This analysis uses a marginal framing to estimate annual service costs. Under this method, the non-school per-capita cost derived from the FY2027 City General Fund budget (computed as total non-education general fund expenditures of $207,912,496 minus the school tuition of $76,429,791, divided by 25,026 residents, yielding $5,254 per capita) is multiplied by the number of new residents and by a marginal cost factor (0.25–0.55, central 0.35), on the rationale that fixed services such as roads and administration do not scale proportionally with infill residents. School costs are treated separately: estimated K-12 students of 6.9–16.6 (central: ~11.0, computed as proposed units multiplied by a students-per-unit rate of 0.05–0.12, central 0.08) are multiplied by the net local cost per pupil of $19,961, derived as the FY2027 FCPS tuition contract estimate of $76,429,791 minus $14,492,271 in state education revenue, divided by 3,103 students. The resulting school cost component is $137,728–$330,546/yr (central: ~$220,364). Total service cost under the marginal framing is $382,425–$1,181,515 per year (central: ~$654,295).

The marginal framing deliberately understates costs if the project triggers a capacity expansion in any City service; the marginal cost factor's range of 0.25–0.55 is intended to carry that uncertainty. A proportional (average-cost) framing — which would allocate the full per-capita cost to each new resident rather than the marginal share — is not computed in this version but would yield a higher cost estimate and a correspondingly narrower or potentially negative net fiscal range.

Net annual fiscal impact. Under the marginal framing, the net annual fiscal impact — incremental recurring revenues minus the marginal service cost — is estimated at −$364,512 to +$1,989,780 per year, with a central estimate of approximately +$624,700 per year. The range crosses zero, meaning this analysis cannot rule out a net fiscal cost to the City under unfavorable assumption combinations. The main sources of the wide range are: the marginal cost factor (0.25–0.55), the residential assessed value per unit ($359,599–$458,932), and the stacked rough estimates on BPOL, meals tax, and sales tax lines. No external fiscal estimates were provided with this project; there is accordingly no published figure to compare against.

Not evaluated in this version

Analyses of the proposed bike-lane corridor, trail connections, broader pedestrian-network connectivity, environmental effects (stormwater, tree canopy, urban heat), and any comparable-places benchmarking have not been computed and are deferred to future modules. The narrative above addresses only the economic and fiscal dimensions derived from the structured module results provided.