Civic Group Has East F.C. Metro Plans in SIghts

Anticipating that an explosion of new commercial and residential development at the East Falls Church Metro Station is in the works, members of the Arlington/East Falls Church Civic Association are racing to get ahead of the curve with their own ideas about limiting growth and retaining a “rail town” feel to the area rather than urban Ballston-style mega-development.

The station is in the cross-hairs of major developers as the transfer point for those along Metro's Orange Line seeking to take the anticipated rail to Dulles Airport. The projected new rail line would come off the Orange Line between Metro's East and West Falls Church stations, meaning that anyone coming east or west on the Orange Line wishing to transfer to the Dulles rail line would switch trains at East Falls Church.

Already, two large-scale, predominantly-residential developments are under construction near the station, and the impact of a major redevelopment of the perimeter of the station will have a profound impact on the surrounding neighborhoods in both Arlington County and the City of Falls Church.

“I remember Ballston when it was the end of the Orange Line 20 years ago. It was a sleepy neighborhood with just a couple apartment buildings. What it has now become could be what East Falls Church will eventually look like,” one observer said this week. Michael Nardolilli is chair of the Metro Study Committee of the Arlington/East Falls Church Civic Association which spearheaded an independent study of what neighbors feel the East Falls Church development should look like.

The group retained the services of an urban design class at Virginia Tech's Alexandria campus directed by Dr. Louis Colombo. The class made the issue of optimal development at the EFC Metro site its semester project, and members of the class began by moderating a charette to which members of the civic organization were invited at the Falls Church Fire Station last April.

Two teams of students divided the interested citizens into sub-groups to discuss their visions for the area, and then everyone came together to synthesize common ideas.

The students took the results and did overlays on aerial photographs of the area utilizing architectural, landscaping and civil engineering expertise and relevant statistical data to produce a final report, an inch-thick volume called “The East Falls Church Metro Area Plan.”

The report's options will be discussed at a meeting of the civil association tonight at the Tuckahoe School at 7:30 p.m. Prior to any public discussions by Metro, Nardolilli said, this report is designed to develop consensus in the community for quality low-intensity development of the site.

“We would like it to include a neighborhood-oriented retail core,” he said, “With a decking over I-66 that could re-connect a neighborhood that was obliterated when I-66 came through in the mid-1960s and cut it in two. We would like it to include restaurants and a plaza for community events.”

Nardolilli said that prior to I-66, the neighborhood was a cohesive unit centered on a retail core with a lot of vitality. Up until 1938, the neighborhood was part of the Town of Falls Church and constituted 25% of the town's commercial core. It left Falls Church to align with Arlington in 1938 to benefit from lower taxes. It consists of about 1,800 homes. “We would like to recreate what was there before,” Nardolilli said. He said his group is particularly concerned about Metro's plans for the three acres of parking it now has around the EFC station. “They could be thinking about a major parking garage, or a commercial office building. We don't know,” he said.

Unlike the Fairfax County-based West Falls Church Metro station, the East Falls Church station is in Arlington, which has a history of encouraging large-scale development around its Metro stations.

The options presented in the final Virginia Tech study can be seen on the civic association's web site, www.aefcca.org.

Where does the association go from here? It's an educational, interactive and consensus building process for now, Nardolilli said, pending whenever Metro may unveil its plans.