Voting on one of three versions being debated of a War Powers resolution to assert the Constitutional requirement of the U.S. Congress, not the president, to initiate war with a foreign power was expected to happen today in the U.S. House, according to U.S. Rep. Donald S. Beyer, Jr., who represents the 8th District of Virginia that includes the City of Falls Church.
Beyer told the News-Press in an exclusive interview yesterday that he has been in the midst of non-stop discussions and deliberations since the unilateral action by President Trump to order the taking out Iran’s most powerful military leader, Qasem Soleimani, earlier this week.
(Late yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed that a vote would be taken today on a War Powers resolution “to limit the military actions of the president regarding Iran”).
Beyer has been extremely busy on at least three fronts in the recent period, starting with his primary responsibility to represent on behalf of the U.S. people in the House of Representatives.
But he’s also active with his brother, Michael Beyer, in the operation of the family business in the City of Falls Church and as the first member of the U.S. Congress to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttegieg on a just completed week-long campaign swing in Iowa.
The news is that the Beyer brothers, following the passing at 93 of their father and founder of the family business, Donald Beyer Sr. just two years ago in December 2017, moved last year to end their co-ownership of the Falls Church-based Beyer Automotive.
Each brother has confirmed to the News-Press that Don sold his share of the business, which continues to thrive with dealerships around Northern Virginia, to Michael. They said it was years, at least six, in coming, and that the two continue to share, with their sister, Weetie Hill, in the ownership and operation of the family’s real estate holdings.
The real estate that the family has assembled at the site of the Beyer Automotive dealership on West Broad in Falls Church has involved sewing together almost two dozen parcels, the last having been completed last fall, making the site a major force in the West End development plans of the City of Falls Church.
Michael Beyer told the News-Press that while talks have been going on with developer interests involved in the proposed 10.3 acre West End Gateway across W. Broad Street, and interests that have been chosen to develop the adjacent Virginia Tech and West Falls Church Metro station sites, nothing concrete has been agreed to yet.
Currently, Beyer Automotive has a new showroom under construction on their site, with the disposition of the existing showroom still undetermined.
The Beyers are optimistic that with the election in Fairfax County in November of Dalia Palchick to become the county supervisor from the Providence District, that some action may be possible to move the entirety of the Beyer property into the City of Falls Church.
Right now, the boundary between the City and Fairfax County runs right down the middle of the Beyer property, and when the City and county were negotiating boundary adjustments as part of the sale of the City’s water system to the county in 2013 there was resistance by then-county supervisor Linda Smyth to moving the line to put the Beyer land entirely into one or the other jurisdiction.
But now there is hope that can change to create a situation that would be much more favorable for the development of the site overall, especially in tandem with the development of adjacent properties that could also include Federal Realty’s ownership of the East and West Falls Plaza strip malls.
Michael Beyer told the News-Press that the automobile business is booming, with record sales of Volvos, Kias and Land Rovers throughout his holdings in the Northern Virginia region.
Don Beyer expressed the family’s interest in continuing to be a good neighbor and collaborator with the City of Falls Church. Before he was first elected the lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1989, he served a year as the president of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce. Michael Beyer was honored as the winner of the Chamber’s prestigious “Pillar of the Community” award in 2012 and both he and his wife, June Beyer, have remained active in the Chamber to the present.
Innovation has been a hallmark of the family business, which the late patriarch and Korean War veteran Donald Sr. built as a native of the region. It led to Don’s innovative role as an early backer of Barack Obama for president in 2007 and now of Buttegieg in 2019. He was also the first member of the Virginia congressional delegation to call for an impeachment inquiry of President Trump last May.
Of his week on the ground campaigning with Buttegieg in Iowa, Beyer said “the more I am exposed to him, the more I am convinced that I did the right thing in endorsing him as soon as I did.”
