At a Falls Church City Council work session Monday, members of the City’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) presented plans for using their portion of the sale of their property at 301 W. Broad (the old Podolnick site) to Rushmark Properties for the new Harris Teeter project as a land banking resource. The EDA plan would set up a land banking fund with the net $1.8 million that will come to them when the closing on the Rushmark deal comes later this month, and some on the City Council also expressed the hope that the City’s portion of proceeds from that deal would also be contributed to the fund.
It was the EDA’s ability to act quickly on an offer back in 2000 that delivered the Podolnick site currently valued at $4 million and a key to the massive Rushmark project, for only $500,000.