Editorial: On the sale of FC to developers

A RETURN FROM the city’s West End development project. (Display: EYA, PN Hoffman, Regency Centers)

At the Falls Church City Council’s monthly economic development subcommittee meeting at City Hall Tuesday, discussion focused on what should be the best way to promote the city for the real estate developer bus tour that will come through the city next month and will stop. in the city’s West End for lunch. That’s happening because FC’s Planning and Development Office has put in the money to be the main sponsor for the annual event this time. So far, five buses have been booked for the tour. Developers and their teams will fill the buses to look around the region at where they might want to put something.

Central to Falls Church’s marketing pitch, of course, is its success in attracting major developers over the past two decades. Anyone who drives past the West End will now see what all the fuss was about during the past decade’s efforts to demolish the old high school, build a brand new one nearby and dedicate the 10 acres of old school land to dense economic development. is now built by the Hoffman Company. The mass of tall buildings now looming over the area, even though some will not be completed for some time, is breathtaking. This includes a new hotel, which should be ready soon, a large supermarket, apartments, apartments, senior housing, restaurants, shops, a medical building and parking garages and public areas. Hoffman just announced plans to install a giant mural on one of the large blank walls overlooking the city. While this is all very busy, it will be an amazing boon to the Small City when it is fully operational, both in terms of the availability of the amenities it will provide nearby, but also in the tax revenue it will generate in allowing ​​of further cuts in property taxes here.

This development comes on top of smaller but still major mixed-use projects that have either come online or will soon come online, such as Founder’s Row One, Founder’s Row Two, the Insight Broad and Washington project, the Quinn Senior Living center and more, many more. .

But just as important is the city’s education system, with its preschool curriculum through 12 International Baccalaureate, its proximity to major transportation hubs and routes, its civically engaged and savvy population, and, as we suggested, its local newspaper, ours . Falls Church is now the only jurisdiction in the wider region with its own printed newspaper providing total market coverage of the community, which is a great advantage for anyone looking to market, sell or persuade anyone of anything, and who maintains and cultivates an engaging and cultured organization. caring readership, and that is certified by the state to contain official legal notices of any kind.

Real estate agents know how routinely touting the existence of our city’s own newspaper helps sell homes. It also sells thoughtful economic development.