While giving preliminary approval to modifications in the City of Falls Church’s Comprehensive Plan to allow for the new City Center Redevelopment, the City Council let planners know they were not pleased with a plan to plop a “multi-modal transportation center” onto the current location of Brown’s Hardware.

Brown’s has been a Falls Church business for over 100 years and is considered by many in town one of its most unique and historic assets. “You’re asking for it” proposing that location, said Council member David Chavern. The overall plan, covering the north as well as south side of W. Broad Street in the 100, 200 and part of its 300 block, calls for making the area more “pedestrian friendly” by carving the long blocks into shorter ones with new streets. Some of them will be so-called “festival” streets, with no curbs that make them easy to block off to traffic for special events. More of the streets will also include on-street parking and there will be a round-about at the intersection of S. Maple and Annandale Road. The new road grid would become the “bone structure” of the City Center, according to the City Planning Department’s Elizabeth Friel. However, Councilman David Snyder, who voted against the plan along with Dan Sze, said he wondered if they were representative more of bones than “lacerations.”