Fairfax Square

Project description

The site consists of three parcels (58 3 02 013 C, 58 3 02 013 A, and 48 3 14 002 B) covering a stated area of 10.47 acres at the end of Burke Station Road in the City of Fairfax. The extraction notes flag a discrepancy between the stated acreage and parcel-resolved geometry; the 10.47-acre figure is drawn directly from the applicant's Statement of Support.

Existing conditions include 12 commercial buildings with 126,535 square feet of office, medical, personal services, retail, and church uses. No existing residential units are present and no current assessed value for the parcels was available in the project documents with sufficient confidence to use directly.

The proposal, as reflected in the most recent formal submission documents (Statement of Support dated June 23, 2026, and the Draft Commitments), would demolish the majority of existing structures and construct 138 residential units — comprising 90 multifamily and 48 single-family attached units — along with up to 59,000 square feet of new commercial uses in new one- and two-story buildings. The existing five-story office building at 9900 Main Street, containing 70,906 square feet, would be retained. A minimum of 11 of the residential units are committed as affordable at 60% AMI, to be constructed within the first multifamily building. Residential tenure is not established in the project documents; only rental-tenure defaults are applied in this analysis. The project is currently under review; no approval has been granted.

Note: Earlier pre-application documents (Briefing Submission) described a substantially larger program of approximately 293–300 units and approximately 61,000 square feet of new commercial space. This analysis uses the later, formal submission figures of 138 units and up to 59,000 square feet, which are preferred as more recent and authoritative.

Economic effects

New demand

At a stabilized occupancy rate of 0.95 (range 0.90–0.97), the 138 proposed units are estimated to yield 124–134 occupied households. Applying Rutgers CUPR residential demographic multipliers for multifamily product by bedroom mix, and an assumed average household size of 1.8 persons per unit (range 1.5–2.2), new residents are estimated at 186–294, with a central estimate of 236. These households are estimated to bring aggregate annual income of $20.3 million to $27.4 million, computed as households multiplied by the mean income of site census tract 51600300300 ($163,796, from ACS 5-year 2024 data, tables B19025/B11001), scaled by a new-construction income premium.

Spending by category and cluster — screening estimates

New household spending was estimated by category using BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 data, scaled to the income level of new residents using category-specific Engel elasticities. The top spending categories by annual volume are comparison retail ($771,096–$1,389,891), grocery ($745,735–$1,202,271), entertainment ($632,276–$1,165,387), and restaurants and bars ($622,041–$1,096,480).

The Huff-model capture figures below are screening estimates. They are computed using a joint destination-and-mode-choice model applied to individual retail points of interest, with spending allocated by destination attractiveness and walk-time decay, then aggregated to named geographic clusters for reporting. They rank where new residents' spending is likely to land across the trade area — they are not predictions of actual sales.

The five named retail clusters and their estimated annual capture from new residents are:

• Fairchester Drive & Hill Street: $758,733–$1,192,733
• Chain Bridge Road & North Street: $492,190–$944,415
• Mathy Drive & Pickett Road: $279,019–$582,409
• Fair Lakes Parkway & Fair Oaks Mall: $223,254–$351,598
• Blenheim Boulevard & Fairfax Boulevard: $143,143–$272,069

The Huff model also estimates the share of new-resident spending captured at destinations inside the City of Fairfax boundary: 60.6%–66.5% for all retail categories combined, and 64.1%–73.0% for food-away-from-home specifically.

Project's own ground-floor retail capture — screening estimate

The project's proposed ground-floor commercial space (up to 59,000 square feet) is modeled as a competing destination in the same Huff framework. The estimated annual capture of new residents' spending at the project's own retail is $75,767–$211,694, with a central estimate of $139,781. This is a screening estimate. The breakdown within this figure is led by restaurants and bars, followed by convenience retail and comparison retail. Note that this on-site capture figure and the cluster capture figures above are drawn from the same pool of new-resident spending — they are not additive to one another.

Foot-traffic index — screening estimate

Using exact marginal trip flows from the site (with POI-weighted destinations and walk-time decay applied via shortest-path network routing) compared against a seeded sampled baseline betweenness of today's population, the model yields a foot-traffic index change of 0.2% across the 10 nearest commercial street segments. This figure is a screening estimate; the baseline uses a sampled index of current walkers, not calibrated pedestrian counts.

Jobs ledger

Jobs in the on-site space being removed are estimated at 253–506 (central: 362), computed by dividing the existing 126,535 square feet of commercial space by an assumed square-footage-per-office-job ratio of 250–500 square feet per job.

Jobs supported by the proposed retained and new commercial space are estimated as follows:

• On-site retail jobs added: 84–148 (central: 118), computed as proposed retail square footage (59,000 sq ft) divided by an assumed 400–700 square feet per retail job.
• On-site office jobs added: 142–284 (central: 203), computed as proposed office square footage (70,906 sq ft) divided by an assumed 250–500 square feet per office job.

The net on-site job change — retail jobs added plus office jobs added minus existing jobs removed — ranges from −280 to +178, with a central estimate of approximately −41. The wide range reflects the sensitivity of all three job figures to the assumed square-footage-per-job ratios; the sign of the net change is uncertain across the range.

Fiscal effects

Current tax baseline

The current real estate tax on the three site parcels, computed as current assessed value multiplied by the City's real estate tax rate, is $230,412 per year. This figure is derived from the City of Fairfax Real Estate Assessment Database (Patriot WebPro, 2026 vintage) and the FY2027 adopted rate.

Projected real estate tax

Projected assessed value after buildout is estimated at $75,605,897–$118,840,380 (central: $87,312,385), computed as proposed residential units multiplied by assessed value per unit, plus retail square footage multiplied by assessed dollars per square foot, plus office square footage multiplied by assessed dollars per square foot. The residential value-per-unit assumption ($359,599–$458,932) is anchored to three City of Fairfax apartment comparable properties built since 2011, drawn from the Patriot WebPro database. Commercial and office per-square-foot values ($200–$400/sq ft for retail; $200–$450/sq ft for office) are screening ranges.

The resulting projected real estate tax is $810,873–$1,274,563 per year. The real estate tax increase above the current baseline is estimated at $580,462–$1,044,151 per year (central: $706,014), computed as projected tax minus current site tax.

Other recurring revenue lines

Additional recurring revenue lines were estimated as follows. Several of these are rough estimates, as noted, because they depend on assumed rather than observed inputs.

• Personal property tax on resident vehicles (rough estimate): $46,165–$199,023 per year, computed as new households multiplied by assumed vehicles per household (1.0–1.8) multiplied by assumed average vehicle assessed value ($9,000–$20,000) multiplied by the City personal property tax rate. No project-specific vehicle data exists; this is an order-of-magnitude estimate.
• BPOL on project retail (rough estimate): $4,383–$35,260 per year, computed as proposed retail square footage multiplied by assumed gross sales per square foot ($250–$600) multiplied by the City BPOL retail rate, then multiplied by the net-new share (0.15–0.50) to exclude receipts displaced from existing city businesses.
• BPOL on project office (rough estimate): $85,087–$226,899 per year, computed as proposed office square footage multiplied by assumed gross receipts per square foot ($300–$800) multiplied by the BPOL professional/financial services rate. This line is not displacement-adjusted, as professional and medical practices are modeled as serving regional demand.
• Business tangible property tax (rough estimate): $21,460–$80,477 per year, computed as proposed commercial square footage multiplied by assumed equipment value per square foot ($4–$15) multiplied by the City personal property tax rate.
• Meals tax on captured in-city dining: $17,940–$36,031 per year, computed as restaurant spending multiplied by the in-city capture share from the Huff model multiplied by the City meals tax rate.
• Meals tax on project's own restaurants (rough estimate): $29,586–$555,348 per year, computed as ground-floor square footage multiplied by assumed sales per square foot, multiplied by an assumed restaurant share of ground-floor retail (0.30–0.70), multiplied by the meals tax rate, multiplied by the net-new share.
• Local sales tax (in-city captured retail): $10,004–$18,714 per year, computed as in-city captured retail spending multiplied by the local-option sales tax share under Virginia Code § 58.1-605.
• Local sales tax on project's own retail (rough estimate): $21,915–$176,301 per year, 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.

Service costs — two methods

Two cost framings are applied, and they produce substantially different results; both are presented because neither is definitively correct for this project.

The naive per-capita method allocates all General Fund costs to new residents at the citywide average rate: residents multiplied by the non-school per-capita cost ($5,254, derived from FY2027 adopted General Fund budget net of the school tuition contract) plus estimated students multiplied by the net local per-pupil school cost ($19,961, derived as the FY2027 tuition contract net of state education revenue). This yields annual service costs of $1,116,519–$1,877,761 (central: $1,460,166). This method overstates costs for infill development to the extent that fixed citywide services — roads, administration — do not scale with additional residents.

The marginal-cost method applies a marginal cost factor of 0.25–0.55 (central: 0.35) to the non-school per-capita cost, while keeping the school cost identical. This yields annual service costs of $382,425–$1,181,515 (central: $654,295). This method may understate costs if population growth triggers capital or capacity expansions.

School costs are common to both framings: estimated K-12 students of 7–17 (central: 11), computed as proposed units multiplied by an assumed student generation rate of 0.05–0.12 per unit, multiplied by the $19,961 net local per-pupil cost, yields $137,728–$330,546 per year (central: $220,364) in school costs in both framings.

Net fiscal impact

The net annual fiscal impact spans both cost methods together, producing a combined range of −$1,060,758 to +$1,989,780 per year. The naive per-capita method yields a central estimate of approximately −$181,171 per year (range: −$1,060,758 to +$1,255,686). The marginal-cost method yields a central estimate of approximately +$624,700 per year (range: −$364,512 to +$1,989,780). The two ranges overlap substantially, including around breakeven, and the sign of the net impact cannot be determined from this analysis alone.

No external fiscal estimates from the applicant or City staff are published in the project record reviewed for this analysis; accordingly, no comparison to external figures is presented.

Not evaluated in this version

Analyses of the proposed bike-lane corridor, trail connections, and broader multimodal connectivity improvements are deferred and were not computed in this version of the report. Environmental impact analysis and comparable-places analysis (benchmarking the project against similar mixed-use redevelopments in peer jurisdictions) are likewise deferred. These topics may be addressed in subsequent analysis phases as additional project documentation becomes available.