Anyone who thinks development in Fair Lakes is all done is in for a big surprise. Wait 'til you see what's coming.
I've lived in the Fair Lakes area now for nearly six years and there's more traffic, more concrete and fewer trees. And there's more of the former coming and less of the latter on its way.
I'm concerned that in six years, I've witnessed large swaths of mature trees replaced with $500K condos and townhomes. I'm concerned that, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation, one of our main intersections -- Fair Lakes Blvd. and the Fairfax County Parkway, is one of the state's most congested intersections and that traffic there is supposed to double by 2025.
I'm concerned that bucolic, liveable Fair Lakes is being degraded into a developer's sandbox. I'm not opposed to development -- it's natural and it should be organic. But there's been so much growth in five years that it's not been staggered. Today's generation of developers is leaving nothing for future developers to develop.
Is Fair Lakes becoming a smaller version of Tysons Corner (hey, we have a mall, too), but with the talk of but not promise of Metro rail any time soon or other quality of life improvements?
Consider what's to come in Fair Lakes:
- Expanded Fairfax Corner (636,000 square feet)
- Expanded Fairfax Towne Center (160,000 square feet)
- First high-rise residential building and a new office building (combined 263,000 square feet) near the Hyatt
- New townhomes across from the new East Market development
- County Government Center workforce living development
- Pender Campus (35.5 acre site)
- Major development at Waples Mill Road, Route 29 and Government Center Parkway (up to 200,000 square feet)
- Major development at Fair Lakes Blvd. and the Fairfax County Parkway
- A just finished but not yet occupied massive apartment complex known as Camden Monument Place and a new set of browstones off West Ox and Legato roads
- Expanded Fair Lakes shopping center (where Target, BJ's and other big box stores are located)
Like 95 percent of Fairfax County, Fair Lakes is not a walkable community to shop or visit all of the admittedly excellent shopping and dining assets we have.
Where's the cohesive planning? In six years, I've seen developers go crazy and it looks like they will be crazy drunk in the next few years with the projects listed above. How much more development can we sustain? Do we have the capacity for this development? Many of our main roads are already clogged. There's a weak public transportation presence.
This blog hopes to address these issues and invites your thoughts as we grow as a community, though I use the word "community" loosely because like 95 percent of Fairfax County, there's no real sense of neighborhood -- we're all just overgrown and overstuffed suburbia with sidewalks that randomly end and roads with pretty names that meander in odd directions.
