Following on last weekend’s town hall meeting at City Hall and extensive discussions at its regular business meeting Monday and Tuesday’s School Board meeting, the Falls Church City Council will convene for a work session Monday night to put final touches on a “request for proposal,” or RFP, for development of the near 40 acres of land, currently home to George Mason High and Henderson Middle School that was annexed into the City as part of the deal to sell the City’s water system to Fairfax County. The RFP is due to be finalized and circulated to the development community later next week.
Discussions going into completion of the final document have touched on the size and configuration of proposed new school facilities, the size and location of the commercial development component (that can be up to 10 acres), and need for added input from groups like the Economic Development Authority and Chamber of Commerce, and the degree of detail, such as design guidelines, to be included which could hamstring the free creative development plans of prospective developers. RFP responses will be by the end of October, and the decision on a final plan will await a bond referendum vote in November 2016.
