Holmes Run Valley Community

On 7 Oct, Mason District Council hosted a community forum on the Seven Corners redevelopment plan created by Supervisor Gross’s Seven Corners Visioning Task Force.  A report of the meeting is available on the Annandale Blog.  The author of this Web site made a statement pointing out some of the implications of the plan and distributed a handout with illustrations and references to support the statement.

The objective was to encourage residents to register their support or opposition to the plan in e-mails to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.  The community will enjoy or suffer the effects  of the Seven Corners redevelopment for years to come.  It is important that community members engage in the decisionmaking process.

E-Mail Addresses:
Planning Commission (Dear Planning Commission): plancom@fairfaxcounty.gov.
Board of Supervisors (Dear Chairman Bulova): Chairman@fairfaxcounty.gov
Penny Gross (Dear Supervisor Gross): Mason@fairfaxcounty.gov
Include your name and address on all e-mails so recipients know that you live in the county.

The task force redevelopment plan for Seven Corners would demolish 600-800 dwelling units of affordable housing.  The task force has been reluctant to discuss the means by which the housing would be replaced.  The attitude of the task force appears to be that their job is limited to recommending that the housing be demolished; thinking through how it could be replaced is someone else’s job.  The author’s 26 August letter addressed to task force Co-Chair John Thillman asked for a task force meeting agenda item describing successful county redevelopments of affordable housing on the scale that would be required at Seven Corners.      The description requested was not provided.

Letter to the Editor: 7 Corners Doesn’t Need Revitalization

AUGUST 28, 2014

7 Corners Doesn’t Need Revitalization

 Editor,

Let’s not revitalize Seven Corners. In the front-page article of last week’s Falls Church News-Press, Fairfax County’s Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross assured readers that the bulldozers are not yet on the way. Hopefully, the bulldozers will be able to find other work because the plan that has been developed by the Seven Corners Revitalization Task Force should not be implemented.

Seven Corners today is a community-serving retail center. The plan would turn the area into a high-rise residential complex of buildings akin to those in Ballston and Clarendon. The plan calls for leveling the existing Seven Corners Center, Willston I Center, Willston School, and virtually all of the apartment buildings behind Willston I Center between Peyton Randolph Dr. and Patrick Henry Dr. up to Wilson Blvd. The new construction would create a dense urban environment consisting primarily of 28 residential buildings each six-to-ten stories high. Residential floor area would be increased by a factor of nine from today’s 0.6 million square feet to 5.9 million square feet, enough for 6,000 apartments. A sprawling road network would be constructed to serve the complex.

Much planning has gone into warping Seven Corners into an urban compound. What’s missing is the discussion about who wants it. Who wants to turn Seven Corners into a citified Ballston or a Clarendon? Who wants the sprawling road network that would be required, or the overflow traffic cutting through our neighborhoods, or the crowding in our Fairfax County schools, or the loss of convenient community-serving retail stores? What’s the problem with Seven Corners in its long-time role as a retail center that well serves a diverse community?

The question of who wants to “revitalize” the area needs to be answered before more effort goes into planning. We are likely to discover that we can save ourselves the additional planning effort.

Clyde Miller

Falls Church