Accompanying City Manager Wyatt Shields’ annual Falls Church operating budget proposal due the end of this month will be an equally unwieldy so-called Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) budget that will suggest Council priorities for non-operating budget expenditures, mainly infrastructure projects.
At its meeting scheduled for last night, the City’s Planning Commission was due to act on a measure to recommend adoption of the City staff’s outline of proposed coming CIP projects over the next half dozen years.
But this year, the plan could run afoul of some new potentially ambitious economic development plans that have some members of the City’s quasi-private Economic Development Authority (EDA) concerned, the News-Press has learned.
The CIP recommended plans, developed under the City’s Operating Department head Andy Young and prepared by the City’s CIP Coordinator Caitlin Sobsey, could be standing in the way of some important development plans that are in an infancy stage.
Perhaps the most critical case involves the City’s Public Works Department’s plan for a new building on the five acres of City-owned land that is now being used as a property yard off Gordon Road.
The CIP budget calls for $30 million to be spent on a new public works building on that site. Even if the new building plan isn’t scheduled to come forward for another three years, its inclusion this year will make taking it out of future CIP’s much more difficult.
In fact, those five acres are located smack dab in the middle of a highly promising commercial development part of town.
If anything, according to News-Press sources, the entire property yard should be relocated out of its prime area so that maximum economic development can proceed there.
The other even more important aspect of this is the as-yet unknown plans for the adjacent Beyer Automotive site of over 20 acres that former City resident Mike Beyer, brother of Falls Church’s “favorite son” and veteran U.S. Congressman Don Beyer, may be planning for his property at that site.
Mike Beyer, who moved out of the City a few years ago but still operates Beyer Automotive here, has spent years slowly assembling his now 20-plus acre site that runs the length of W. Broad Street from the old Volvo showroom (now unoccupied) all the way down to where the bridge over W. Broad marks the W&OD Trail.
Even though Beyer has been very uncommunicative about his plans, at least in terms of talking about it with City officials or this newspaper, they cannot be dismissed and the potential for linking whatever he may want to do if it could involve connecting his site with the five acre property yard site has to be a top priority for the City.
Bob Young, chair of the EDA, told the News-Press that he’s not aware of what the EDA might vote to recommend at this stage, but that the City should keep its options open.
The core functions of DPW include: Streets and Sidewalks, Traffic Signals, Streetlights, Pavement Markings, and Street Signage, Stormwater and Sanitary Sewer, Buildings and Facilities, City Fleet & Equipment, Urban Forest and Green spaces and Solid Waste and Recycling.
The existing Robert L. Goff Property Yard was built in 1962 and is the operation center for the entire City. Due to the existing conditions and footprint of the building, staff is recommending a new project for the total demolition and replacement of the existing facility. The proposed project increases capacity, improves overall operational standards and efficiency, expands existing services, and increases energy efficiency. Preliminary conceptual design and master plans are underway in FY24. For planning purposes, the new project request of $30,000,000 is included in this years CIP, as well as financial reference materials in Section 2 for bond referendum policy. Staff recommended funding source is debt, to be issued in FY2028, which would require a future bond referendum.
