Residential conversion proposed for Annandale office building
Nicholas Development, the owner of two office buildings in Annandale, wants to convert one of them to multifamily housing.
The company is in early discussions with Fairfax County planning staff about a residential conversion for 7620 Little River Turnpike, says Senior Vice President Timothy Sachs.
The six-story building is vacant except for a Wells Fargo bank branch on the ground floor. Wells Fargo has a long-term lease and will remain, Sachs says.
The other few remaining tenants were moved to 7630 Little River Turnpike, which will remain an office building.
The conversion proposal is driven by the decreased demand for office space, and Sachs doesn’t expect that to change.
He hopes to submit a rezoning application to the county within the next 60 days.
“We’re still doing market analysis,” Sachs says, so the company hasn’t determined the number or size of units or whether the building will be converted to apartments or condominiums, although he is leaning toward condos.
“We’re trying to bring value to the community vs. empty office space,” he says.
There is no timeline for construction. Sachs says his goal is to submit a building permit 90 days after the rezoning is approved. The Alexandria-based Rust Orling architecture firm is working on the building design.
Sachs hopes to eliminate some of the surface parking to create a park and plaza. A storage building on the site could be used to provide amenities for the residents, such as a gym or café.
In 2020, Nicholas Development proposed a Comprehensive Plan amendment to allow a much larger mixed-use project for that property to include townhouses as well as multifamily housing. The Board of Supervisors rejected the proposal in January 2021, citing significant opposition from the community.
Related story: Annandale residents say a large mixed-use development would destroy their neighborhood
19 responses to “Residential conversion proposed for Annandale office building”
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Better to have owners who pay taxes and patronize neighborhood businesses than an empty eyesore.
Aces, let’s get this underway asap. Here is a great example of turning existing office buildings into housing, the solution that is constantly brought up as an alternative by those opposed to new mixed-use developments.
Since we already have the bottom retail mayeb we can keep that and make it mixed use with something a little better than Wells Fargo if possible
I highly encourage our community leaders during rush hour to get onto Hummer road from Gallows or Annandale Blvd on the way to the 7620 Hummer road building shown in the photo . There is already such a bottleneck of traffic there. Adding a large mixed-use space will make the traffic even worse.
Whatever happens to this space, I please ask that you consider the extant community and how a poorly -executed plan would exacerbate the issues already present with the Hummer road/little river turnpike intersection.
Great point I didn’t even think about! I compare Hummer road, between Arlington blvd and little River turnpike, to a neighborhood I66
It’s just the price of doing business. We have collectively refused to build any type of sustainable transportation infrastructure and we are being punished for it. We need housing and the exacerbated traffic congestion is unavoidable now, regardless of where new condos are built.
I hope this developer learned that re-development needs to complement and contribute to the neighborhood. The last proposal would have been a disaster. I hope the promised park and plaza are not merely a pretext to get the zoning changed from commercial to residential and are then abandonned. Given past experience, I have no reason to believe this developer can be trusted.
That building has hardy any windows. Good luck with that! I say demo it and start over. Building is a piece of crap.
Great point about the lack of windows being inconsistent with desirable residential use. If they are going to continue using this building, they need to complete reclad and refurbish it to look decent and modern. It is currently a dreadful eyesore.
When buildings like this are repurposed, the exterior walls are removed and replaced with something more appropriate for residential; they’re called curtain walls. They aren’t load bearing so it allows for a variety of options.
So not housing for the growing homeless population?
We don’t have the proper transit/shelter needs for the homeless here. They’re better suited to be taken care of in places like Tysons, Arlington and Fairfax/Falls Church City that can provide more for them.
It’s encouraging that there’s an interest in improving that corner but how about a master plan for that parcel and the neighboring streets and business to see how it can be optimized. The service road there is already a mess — now let’s add more pedestrians, bike, scooters and cars! I wonder how that will work out?!
This is wonderful for the community. Now the community needs to provide transit for the new (and old) residents so we don’t add to the number of cars that are already overwhelming our community. Let’s think like a city. Density is good, more cars are bad.
Feel free to ride your bike or take a bus. Like most people, I need my car.
No and no again. Traffic is so bad on all surrounding roads. My family is already thinking to move away from this area, because of traffic and it got worse compared to 20 year ago when we moved to our house close to Hammer Rd. I think more residents will make it worse.
This side of Annandale is already a densely populated area. We don’t need more multi-housing options here to get the commercial sector out of the trouble they got themselves into. Agree on the master plan… parking is a major issue here.
It’s not that big of a building (I’d estimate 20-30 units max), it’s not gonna do that much to traffic. On the other hand, the traffic isn’t caused by the quantity of units/buildings in this area, it’s caused by a horrificly laid out street plan. Who let that happen back in the day? Anyway, it’s time to fix that problem, and it probably requires some property acquisition by the local government.
The corner they are considering would be difficult bc there is a great deal of traffic at that corner of Hummer and LRT .& there is one way out right into Hummer across from 7 Eleven and the other empties out on the service road that is difficult to make a left onto from LRT because I go that way going to Lafayette village. .