As I mentioned in my last post, I've been slightly obsessed with the latest buzz going around Falls Church of a new City Center. Up until recently, downtown Falls Church has been a bit of a dump. There's just not much going on besides a few choice restaurants, bars, The State Theater and a bunch of outdated rundown office buildings. However, there has recently been a good amount of development happening further west on Rt. 7 including: The Byron, The Read Building and The Spectrum. All of which show much promise bringing much needed high end retail, restaurant and class A office space and from what I hear, beautiful condos.

There's also another development currently under construction which peaks my interest even more, Pearson Square located on South Maple Avenue, only a rocks throw from our new house. From what I've read, it sounds like it's going to deliver a much needed boost to the surrounding downtown area. It will include 230 condos, 75,000 sq.ft. of Class A office space and 25,400 of high quality retail and restaurant space. The retail space will focus on the arts and feature local visual and performing artists. Sounds great, doesn't it? There's already been a bit of development that's gone up recently surrounding Maple Ave. including a new Elevation Burger(highly recommend), a spa and a personal trainer/gym type of a thing. This looks to be the first of many steps that The City of FC's taking to turn the whole downtown area around.

As you can see from the pic I posted of the proposed city center, they're initially looking to target roughly a 6 square block area downtown. However, this past December, “The Atlantic Realty Companies (ARC) submitted an application to the City for a mixed-use development project on approximately five acres of land located on the south side of West Broad Street (Route 7), east of the post office, and in the 200 block of South Maple Avenue—the current site of Bowl America. ARC’s proposal will bring elements the City has been striving for in its downtown commercial district for years, including retail, residential housing, office space, and a hotel. The plan includes a Harris Teeter grocery store; more than 100,000 square feet of new office space on Broad Street; a 180-room hotel; approximately 500 residential apartments that include affordable housing; 67 condominiums structured as age-restricted housing; a new Bowl America bowling facility; and about 1,500 spaces of structured parking, primarily underground. Roughly 40 percent of this phase of City Center will be commercial, 60 percent residential.” Click here for a rendered drawing. WAAAWHOO!!! More to come....