The gathering earlier this month of the Falls Church City Council, Planning Commission and Economic Development Authority (EDA), folks all crammed into a F.C. City Hall meeting room, spent an hour and a half discussing how the 22-acre Gordons Road Triangle area at the west end of the City, south of Route 7, might be, to a greater or lesser degree, redeveloped.

It is not a matter that is expected to be acted on seriously anytime real soon. However, there was one component of that conversation sorely missing, and because of that, the entire exercise was quite inadequate. That is, the matter of the overarching Recession (with a capital ‘R’), and possibly worse, facing the region thanks to the wanton cancellation of federal programs by the Trump administration.

This week’s Washington Post story about the impact of 15,000 jobs lost in Maryland quotes Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, saying that “it is safe to say the Maryland economy is in a full scale recession” as a result.

A similar story could be written about Virginia. According to the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia, over 11,000 federal jobs in Virginia have already been affected and another 10,000 are at risk, with broad impacts also on professional, scientific and technical jobs that rely on federal work. Nobody knows right now how bad it will get, but it will be very bad.

So, in this context, the question must become for the City of Falls Church what kind of revenue is required to keep the City going, without drastic cuts and tax increases, in the face of this grim reality? That question was not entertained by anyone at the Sept. 15 meeting.

The 22 acres around Gordons Road is the City’s last best shot at doing something big that would be especially important in the current situation. Twenty-two acres is a lot of land, twice the size of the 10 acres that the City so deftly orchestrated to be morphed into the grand West End project that has arisen on land that was not that long ago used for its high school.

The triangle includes about an equal portion of land actually owned by the City, on the one hand, and the Beyer Family, on the other. The Beyers sold their auto dealership, but continue to own the land on which it sits and more. So, while the Beyers have submitted preliminary plans to Fairfax County for the portion of their parcel that spills over into the county, surely they would be open to talks with City of F.C. people on how to proceed for the best yield.

Then there is the land across the street where the Giant now sits, owned by Federal Realty. What if it came into those talks, and something with a floor-area-ratio (FAR) equal or greater than the West End, was cooked up? We’re going to need it.