News-Press Editorial:

It has heartening to see the City of Falls Church economic development team fully "locked and loaded" at the start of the new year, as reflected in the Economic Development Authority's report to the City Council here Monday night. With the City's new economic development czar Richard Goff on board, augmenting the work of Larry Watson and the EDA board and its chair Ed Saltzberg, the City is poised to push off to make some important headway in 2004.

Similarly, the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce, after three years of renaissance leadership under local businessman Jim Elkin, is now under the baton of its new president, former Falls Church Vice Mayor Dr. Steve Rogers, who's also chair of the City Center Task Force. The Chamber is thus also well situated to weigh in during these important times. In a related vein, at Tuesday's Chamber Board meeting, a local developer had encouraging words to say about City Hall's swift and expeditious treatment of his site plan submission, saying it could make him the envy of developers in the region.

This Monday, the City Council will meet in a closed session to receive the official recommendation of the City Center Task Force for a master developer to spearhead a transformation of the City's downtown area. It's been too long coming, in the minds of some, and it will take until summer for a contract to be hammered out. It will be a wise move for the final contract to await the City Council's signature only after its election this May, so that those who will be responsible for implementing the policy will be those who signed off on it.

Nonetheless, although slow, the process is clearly underway. A cover story last week in another area newspaper about plans for the development of a town center at Fairfax Crossing demonstrated just what folks in Falls Church have been pushing for here: a sense of "place" with sidewalk cafes, movie screens, visual arts and live theatre venues, a pedestrian friendly ambiance, and new large-scale mixed residential and commercial developments. But we are reminded that the Fairfax Crossing project will be built on relatively undeveloped land, which represents a major difference from the situation in Falls Church. Here, a similar kind of redevelopment will be attempted on extremely expensive real estate that is already home to many viable businesses.

Meanwhile, another large scale mixed use project will be up for a first reading before the Falls Church City Council by the end of this month. It is hoped that The Pavilion, slated for the 400 block of West Broad, will be approved before spring. As the EDA's report to the Council documented Monday, such projects bring the highest possible yield of net revenue to the City per acre. We certainly can use that.