Kudos to the Falls Church City Council for its long-anticipated passage of the two measures needed to permit the construction of the Quinn-Homestretch Senior Living project. The Council passed the measures by a 5-2 vote Monday night to culminate over a year of intense deliberation by advisory and other bodies throughout the Little City coming onto Monday’s final OK. The work is not done, of course, as with any of the near dozen large scale mixed use projects that the City has OK’d the last two dozen years. The deal needs to be hammered out with Arlington to make sure that the necessary hook ups to solid waste facilities occur and that the financial arrangements get finalized and a site plan approved. But it is now out of the hands of the political decision makers, and it will happen. See our story on Page One of this edition.

It is truly a dream project, and all are to be complimented who’ve had a role. See the Letter to the Editor by the Quinn family patriarch, Paul Quinn, to the right. It is ostensibly a love letter to Falls Church from a man, and his family, who put down roots here and are culminating a long career of local business and community involvement with a crowning achievement. We will now watch it come out of the ground and grace our entire community. It has all the elements of filling a need for senior housing and services, for medical services to the wider community, and with its park space and other public amenities, for enhancing the quality of life of everyone in and around Falls Church.

With all that has already grown up here, and with a lot more to come (so we anticipate), this Quinn project is unique for being truly homegrown, the first large scale project in the City to be advanced by a local entity since Bob Young built his now iconic “Flower Building” in the 800 block of W. Broad. The Quinns have been an established fixture in the City for decades prior to this, with both sons graduating from our local high school and following in their father’s footsteps in his auction business. The local Chamber of Commerce has benefited from them as well, with their professional auctioneering talents being offered at its gala fundraisers, for example.

It was a bit sad to see some newcomers on the City Council clearly unaware of this history, although one of the Council’s newest members, Justine Underhill, won a hero’s recognition for her report Monday of her personal initiative to go door to door in a nearby neighborhood potentially impacted by shadows from the new building and finding first hand that residents there favored the project.

The 5-2 Council approval vote was a foregone conclusion long before a lot of politically-inspired delay tactics finally ran their course. The Quinns and city taxpayers paid for the delays that added little to the otherwise commendable result.