Lamb Center/Wesley Housing

Project description

The site is parcel 48-3-09-020, located at 9640 Fairfax Boulevard, comprising 0.41 acres. The existing use is a 12-room Hy-Way Motel. The project documents do not provide a square footage figure for the existing structure, and existing assessed value and existing job counts are not reported in the source documents; those fields carry low extraction confidence.

The proposal replaces the motel with a new five-story structure containing 54 residential rental units on floors 2 through 5 and 1,400 square feet of office space on the ground floor, along with 18 parking spaces (5 dedicated to the commercial space and 13 to residential uses, per the November 2022 Summary of Commitments). All 54 units are designated affordable, offered to persons at or below 50% of area median income through long-term leases. No retail square footage is explicitly stated in numeric terms in the project documents; the Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA), the most authoritative document on the building program, records all non-residential floor area solely as "1,400 SF of office." The project status is under construction.

Economic effects

New demand. Using a stabilized occupancy rate of 0.95 (range 0.90–0.97), the 54 proposed units are estimated to yield 48.6–52.4 occupied households, computed as proposed units multiplied by the occupancy rate. Applying Rutgers CUPR multifamily bedroom-mix multipliers (Listokin et al. 2006), households are converted to an estimated 73–115 new residents (central estimate 92, computed as households multiplied by persons per multifamily unit).

The aggregate annual household income of new residents is estimated by multiplying households by the mean income of Census tract 51600300200 ($195,124 from ACS 5-year 2024, tables B19025/B11001) and a new-construction income premium assumption (range 1.0–1.25, central 1.125). This yields an aggregate income range of approximately $9.5 million to $12.8 million per year. That figure is used to scale per-category consumer spending via BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 line items and Engel-gradient elasticities by category; it is an input to the spending estimates, not itself a revenue figure for the city.

Spending clusters and capture. New annual household spending by category (computed as households multiplied by CES category spend scaled by an income ratio raised to the category elasticity) is estimated as follows: grocery, $316,000–$509,000; restaurants and bars, $282,000–$498,000; comparison retail (apparel, furnishings), $356,000–$642,000; convenience retail, $58,000–$97,000; personal services, $82,000–$145,000; entertainment, $297,000–$548,000.

These capture figures are screening estimates. The Huff model allocates this spending across individual retail points of interest using a joint destination-and-mode choice, P(j,m) ~ A_j × w_m × exp(−b_m × t_mj), and clusters the results by named area for reporting. The top clusters by estimated annual capture are:

• Fairchester Drive & Hill Street: $321,759–$502,495 per year (led by grocery and comparison retail)
• Blenheim Boulevard & Fairfax Boulevard: $165,483–$434,758 per year (led by restaurants and bars)
• Chain Bridge Road & North Street: $153,184–$261,764 per year (led by entertainment and comparison retail)
• Mathy Drive & Pickett Road: $103,444–$180,646 per year
• Fair Lakes Parkway & Fair Oaks Mall: $101,941–$155,567 per year (led by comparison retail)

The in-city capture share is estimated at 56.7%–61.9% across all retail categories and 61.6%–69.6% for food-away-from-home specifically, computed as the Huff model's share of capture landing at destinations inside the city boundary.

Project's own ground-floor retail capture. The project's 1,400 square feet of ground-floor space is recorded in all TIA documents as office, not retail. Because no retail square footage is specified in the program, the annual capture at the project's own ground-floor retail is $0 (range $0–$0). The Huff model included the project's own space as a competing destination; it returned no capture because no retail square footage entered the model.

Foot-traffic index change. The foot-traffic index change across the 10 nearest commercial street segments is computed as the exact marginal trip flows from the site (using POI-weighted destinations and exponential walk-decay shortest paths) compared against a seeded sampled baseline betweenness of today's population. This is a screening estimate. The computed value is 0%, with no low/high bounds reported. The metric note states that the percentage comparison uses a sampled index of today's walkers, not calibrated pedestrian counts.

Jobs ledger. On-site office jobs added are estimated at 2.8–5.6 (central 4), computed as 1,400 square feet of proposed office divided by an assumed 250–500 square feet per office job. No retail square footage enters the model, so on-site retail jobs added are 0. No existing commercial square footage is recorded for the motel, so jobs removed from existing space are also 0. Net on-site job change is therefore 2.8–5.6 jobs, computed as retail jobs added plus office jobs added minus existing jobs removed.

Fiscal effects

Real estate tax — current vs. projected. The current annual real estate tax on parcel 48-3-09-020 is $10,522, computed as the current assessed value multiplied by the applicable rate and divided by 100. The projected assessed value after construction is estimated at $19,698,360–$25,412,353 (central $19,913,055), computed as proposed units multiplied by assessed value per unit (derived from three City of Fairfax apartment-class comparable parcels built since 2011, ranging from $359,599 to $458,932 per unit) plus proposed office square footage multiplied by an assumed office assessed value per square foot ($200–$450/sqft). The projected annual real estate tax is therefore $211,265–$272,547 (central $213,568), yielding a real estate tax increase of $200,743–$262,025 per year.

Other recurring revenue lines. Additional revenue lines are estimated as follows (all are rough estimates where labeled as such):

• Personal property tax on resident vehicles (rough estimate): $18,065–$77,879 per year, computed as new households multiplied by an assumed vehicles-per-household figure (range 1.0–1.8, central 1.4) multiplied by an assumed average vehicle assessed value (range $9,000–$20,000, central $14,000) multiplied by the city personal property tax rate.
• BPOL business license tax on project office (rough estimate): $1,680–$4,480 per year, computed as proposed office square footage multiplied by an assumed gross receipts per square foot (range $300–$800, central $500) multiplied by the city's professional/business-services BPOL rate.
• Business tangible personal property tax (rough estimate): $231–$867 per year, computed as proposed commercial square footage multiplied by an assumed equipment value per square foot (range $4–$15, central $8) multiplied by the city's personal property tax rate.
• Meals tax on captured in-city dining: $7,831–$15,595 per year, computed as restaurant spending multiplied by the in-city capture share multiplied by the city meals tax rate, using the economic module's Huff results.
• Local sales tax share on captured in-city retail: $4,137–$7,728 per year, computed as in-city captured retail spending multiplied by the local sales tax share.

Service costs — two methods, named explicitly. The analysis presents two cost framings, and the net fiscal range intentionally spans both:

The naive per-capita method allocates the full General Fund per-capita cost to all new residents: it computes residents multiplied by the non-school General Fund per capita ($5,254, derived from FY2027 adopted budget: ($207,912,496 − $76,429,791) ÷ 25,026 residents) plus estimated students multiplied by the net local cost per pupil ($19,961, derived as ($76,429,791 tuition − $14,492,271 state education revenue) ÷ 3,103 students). This yields an annual service cost of $436,899–$734,776. This method overstates costs for infill development because it allocates fixed citywide costs — roads, administration, and other services that do not scale proportionally — to each new resident.

The marginal framing applies a marginal cost factor (range 0.25–0.55, central 0.35) to the non-school per-capita cost, reflecting that many fixed municipal services do not expand in proportion to new infill residents, while school costs follow the project's own estimated student generation directly. This yields an annual service cost of $149,645–$462,332. This method may understate costs if new residents trigger capacity expansions in service infrastructure.

School costs under both framings are driven by the estimated student count — 2.7 to 6.5 students (central 4.3), computed as 54 units multiplied by an assumed student generation rate of 0.05–0.12 per unit — multiplied by the net local cost per pupil of $19,961. The resulting school cost component is $53,893–$129,344, included identically in both framings.

Net annual fiscal impact. Combining recurring revenues with each cost framing:

• Naive per-capita method: −$502,090 to −$68,325 per year (central −$306,530). This is the upper-bound cost framing; it allocates fixed citywide costs to new residents.
• Marginal framing: −$229,646 to +$218,929 per year (central +$8,811). This framing limits costs to those that scale with new residents.

The combined range across both methods is −$502,090 to +$218,929 per year. The wide span reflects genuine methodological uncertainty about how much of the city's cost structure scales with an additional 54 affordable units of this type, rather than measurement error in the revenue figures.

No applicant fiscal impact analysis and no staff fiscal impact report were found in the project document corpus. There is therefore no external published estimate to compare against this analysis.

Not evaluated in this version

Several analyses identified as relevant to this project have been deferred and are not reflected anywhere in the figures above: the bicycle-lane corridor analysis, trail connectivity and active-transportation network effects, broader multimodal connectivity assessment, environmental impact analysis, and comparable-places benchmarking against similar permanent supportive housing developments. These will be addressed in subsequent modules if commissioned.