GAINSWave Therapy in Franconia, VA

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Inova Health System has received state approval to build a new hospital in the Franconia area of southern Fairfax County.

Inova announced Wednesday that the Virginia Department of Health had approved its Certificate of Public Need for the facility. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the hospital system’s land-use applications last year.

The new hospital will be built on land next to Inova’s existing Franconia-Springfield HealthPlex and within walking distance of the Franconia-Springfield Metro and Virginia Railway Express stations.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to bring inpatient care to the community we have served for many years,” said Dr. J. Stephen Jones, president and CEO of Inova.

Rodney Lusk, who represents the Franconia District on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said he was delighted by the state’s approval. “Inova has been our community’s trusted health partner at this location for many years, and this expansion of that collaboration will improve the health and economic vitality of our community for generations to come.”

The Franconia hospital will be one of two replacement hospitals for the current Inova Alexandria Hospital on Seminary Road. The other location will be at the WestEnd Town Center (formerly Landmark Mall) in the city of Alexandria.

The initial phase of the Franconia-Springfield project will include an inpatient facility with 110 beds spread across two towers. The hospital will include private rooms, an expanded emergency room, diagnostic imaging and multiple procedural rooms. An adjacent building will offer a variety of outpatient services, including ambulatory surgery, physician offices and procedural rooms.

The existing HealthPlex will be linked to the hospital through internal road and walkway connections. The emergency room at the HealthPlex will be expanded and relocated into the hospital.

During construction of the new buildings, patients will continue to have access to the emergency room, physical therapy, physician offices and other clinical operations at the Franconia-Springfield HealthPlex, Inova said.

Construction on the new hospital is slated to begin in 2024 and to be completed in 2028.

Inova said it has made several commitments to environmental sustainability on the site, including LEED Silver certification. The campus will include nearly 2 acres of park space with walking trails and benches available for public use. Inova said it will maintain 30% open space on the property and will maximize preservation of mature trees along the north side of the property and near the intersection of the Franconia-Springfield Parkway and Beulah Street.

This article was written by WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.

Officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Oakwood Meadow Senior Residences, a new affordable housing development in Franconia.

Patch Staff

Posted Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 9:43 am ET|

FRANCONIA, VA — Officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Oakwood Meadow Senior Residences, a new affordable housing development for seniors in Franconia.

Oakwood Meadow has more than 6,000 square feet of amenity space, including community rooms, a game room, a library, a sunroom and gardening space, package lockers, a fitness center, laundry on each floor, shuttle service, and an outdoor lounge space.

The property, at 5815 S Van Dorn Street, is located a half-mile from the Van Dorn Metro Station and one mile from the Kingstowne Towne Center.

The project, located on a site that was previously a stormwater retention pond, was a public-private partnership between the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing, an affordable housing developer in the D.C. area, and the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

“Oakwood Meadow shows that underutilized, vacant public property can be transformed into something beautiful that serves the people of our community,” said Jeff McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, who participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday. “It also is an example of how affordable housing is — and can be — everywhere across Fairfax County.”

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Along with the contribution of public land, Fairfax County and the FCRHA invested $5.25 million in local Housing Blueprint funding, nearly $12.6 million in bond financing, and awarded project-based vouchers for Oakwood Meadow.

Additional financing came from both 4 and 9-percent Low-Income Housing Tax Credits awarded by Virginia Housing and nearly $30 million in equity investments from Bank of America.

Oakwood Meadow is APAH’s first project in Fairfax County and its second senior community. Founded in 1989, APAH owns more than 2,400 residences. APAH has nearly 400 affordable apartments under construction and an additional 1,500 in the development phase.

“We have an obligation to meet the growing need of this population and provide quality, affordable places for people, especially our seniors, to call home,” APAH President and CEO Carmen Romero said in a statement.

Supported by a partnership with Fairfax County Neighborhood Community Services, residents will be able to receive onsite grocery distribution, recreational and educational opportunities such as craft nights, computer literacy programming, and transportation assistance.

Members of the public can apply to live at Oakwood Meadow by visiting APAH's website.

Proposed transportation changes at the West Falls Church and Franconia-Springfield Metro stations will advance to the agency’s full board, even as some raised eyebrows at the amount of public opposition to its Franconia plan.

To accommodate an upcoming extension of Frontier Drive, Metro intends to reconfigure traffic patterns at the Franconia station by adding three new bus bays and a bus layover facility, eliminating a pick-up and drop-off area, and signalizing the Metro Access Road and Frontier Drive intersections.

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority staff recommended proceeding with the plan but noted that about 42% of community members who commented on the proposal opposed it, primarily because of the pick-up/drop-off area removal.

“That is a big number to oppose something,” Matt Letourneau, the WMATA Board of Directors’ finance and capital committee chair, said at a meeting last Thursday (March 9).

Currently on a median between the station’s parking garage and bus bays, the pick-up area needs to be removed to meet “adequate traffic flow requirements and reduce vehicular and pedestrian conflicts,” staff said in a presentation to the committee.

As noted in the report, the station has a Kiss and Ride lot on the parking garage’s ground floor with “significant capacity,” as well as a surface lot available for picking up and dropping off riders.

Staff said the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Frontier Road Extension project should provide clearer signage explaining where the lots are and that they’re free to use.

“The pedestrian bridge that goes from the garage to the station, I think, in part is blocking the view to that Kiss and Ride,” WMATA Real Estate and Station Area Planning Director Steven Segerlin said. “So, one of the things we talked about to VDOT was having a large sign on the garage or on the pedestrian bridge [that says] Kiss and Ride or pick-up/drop-off ahead.”

West Falls Church plan heralds future of Metro development

At last week’s meeting, the committee also accepted a report recommending reductions to the West Falls Church station’s parking and bus facilities, paving the way for over 1 million square feet of mixed-use development.

While the Fairfax County Planning Commission deferred a decision on the project to tomorrow (Wednesday), Metro board members seemed optimistic about its potential to transform not just that area in Idylwood, but the transit agency’s overall approach to development around its stations.

“They’re not just plots of land. They are assets we own,” Board of Directors Chair Paul Smedberg said. “There’s always been talk about…how do we best utilize those assets, whether it be parking lots or working with the jurisdictions?”

According to Segerlin, the West Falls Church project is one of WMATA’s first to evaluate parking needs based on station utilization and area household growth trends instead of requiring every eliminated parking space to be replaced, a change implemented as part of a joint development policy update in 2018.

Some residents have objected to the project’s density and elimination of roughly 700 parking spots, but Fairfax County and Metro officials have championed transit-oriented development as necessary to create more vibrant, less car-reliant communities.

In conversations with local leaders, Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke said he has heard “loud and clear” that the authority should accelerate the strategic plan for development that it unveiled last year, calling for 20 more joint agreements to develop various stations by 2032.

“One of the things that we have to do is we have to make our sites pencil out, and if we’re going to tell people they have to do a one-to-one parking ratio change, these deals will never pencil out,” Clarke said. “…We want people to be as close as possible to our stations and build as many town centers, village centers.”

At the Morgan Blvd station in Prince George’s County, Maryland, it takes eight minutes to walk from one end of the parking lot to the other, he recalled from a recent visit.

“The reality is we need to have probably less parking there and more housing and mixed development. That’s what the state wants, that’s what we want,” he said.

Board member Michael Goldman cited North Bethesda as another underutilized station that has “laid fallow for 40 years.” He anticipates it’s one of several sites in Montgomery County — which figures heavily into the strategic plan — that will seek to take advantage of Metro’s updated policy on parking requirements.

“These are exciting. The West Falls Church project is a great way to utilize that station and breathe some life into it,” Letourneau said.

The West Falls Church and Franconia staff reports will both go to the full Metro Board of Directors for a vote on March 23.

FRANCONIA, Va. (7News) — The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to rename the Lee District to Franconia.

Supervisor Rodney L. Lusk introduced a board matter to start the process to initiate the name change after he spoke with the community.

In a statement, Lusk said: "Over the last two and a half years, my office has held three town hall meetings to hear directly from the community on what the name Lee District means to them. Through these discussions, I've learned that for many of our neighbors, the name Lee District invokes images of the Old Gravel Pits, footsteps along the boardwalk at Huntley Meadows, or pride in the history of Laurel Grove School.

However, for others, the name Lee stands for the most recognizable confederate figure in history, General Robert E Lee. I also learned that the overwhelming majority of those who participated in this year-long process support changing the name of this district."

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His statement continued: "After considering the feedback that my office has received from the community, the recommendations from the Redistricting Advisory Committee, and after much contemplation, it is my personal conclusion that the time has come to change the name of our district.

This Tuesday, I will be introducing a Board Matter requesting that my colleagues join me in voting to adopt Franconia as the new name of our district. The name Franconia was the overwhelming preference for those who participated in this process.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 'Symbols do matter': Debate begins over changing name of Lee District in Fairfax County

Franconia is a name that is synonymous with our community. From Franconia Road, the Franconia Springfield Metro, the Franconia Museum, and the Franconia Governmental Center, the name Franconia has always been central to our identity. It is also a name that memorializes a place and not a person."

Thank you to the hundreds of constituents that wrote letters, sent emails, called our office, and participated in our three town halls. I look forward to bringing this motion to the Board on Tuesday and beginning this new chapter in our community.

READ MORE | Task force votes to recommend name changes for two Fairfax highways named for Confederates

In response to the name change, Fairfax County Democratic Committee (FCDC) Chair Bryan Graham said, “Fairfax County is a diverse, welcoming place to call home. Our institutions of government should reflect the values of equity and inclusion, not be named after families with ties to the failed Confederacy.”

Franconia District Democratic Committee Chair Kathy Rhem praised Lusk’s efforts and said the new name reflects a positive future for the district.

“I appreciate Supervisor Lusk’s thoughtful and collaborative process to arrive at this new name. This change comes at a great time for our committee, as our officers and dedicated volunteers have been working hard to redouble our efforts to elect candidates truly committed to liberty and justice for all,” Rhem said.

The County Executive is expected to make sure the name change moves forward and any updates are made.

Voters can expect to see the name change reflected on the ballot when they go to vote for District Supervisor and School Board Representative in November 2023.

Supervisor Rodney Lusk wants the owner of the Rose Hill Plaza to conduct additional community outreach on its redevelopment proposal.

ROSE HILL, VA — The owner of Rose Hill Plaza in Franconia should reach out to the community for more feedback about the proposed redevelopment of the shopping center because the current proposal is "unacceptable," Franconia District Supervisor Rodney Lusk said Thursday.

The supervisor urged the shopping center's owner, Combined Properties Inc., to engage with the community again before it submits a revised plan for the site at the corner of Franconia Road and Rose Hill Drive.

Lusk, in a Facebook post Thursday afternoon, said he has asked staff of the Fairfax County Planning Commission to recommend deferral of the Rose Hill project to give Combined Properties time to have more conversations with residents in Rose Hill and surrounding communities, many of whom oppose the current redevelopment plans for the shopping center.

Find out what's happening in Kingstowne-Rose Hillwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Following the comments we received from the public, I determined that the current proposal is unacceptable to the community and that it is unacceptable to me as well,” Lusk said Thursday.

On April 11, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on which “nominations” should be added to the “work program” for formal planning and study following the planning commission’s preliminary decision. The vote will not be an endorsement of any plan or redevelopment application, Lusk emphasized.

The supervisor noted he remains committed to continued conversations with Combined Properties and residents, with the goal of "arriving at a proposal that will best serve the Rose Hill community and the surrounding neighborhoods."

"I am hopeful that we will be able to reach that conclusion," Lusk said.

At a March 9 meeting, the planning commission recommended that the Rose Hill Plaza nomination be added to the Comprehensive Plan Amendment Work Program — a list of planning studies across Fairfax County — as a Tier 3 “deferred” project, meaning staff would not begin working on it until other work has been completed. In the case of the Rose Hill Plaza project, additional outreach by Combined Properties would be needed.

The Rose Hill Coalition, a group formed last fall in opposition to Combined Properties' current redevelopment proposal, welcomed Lusk's decision to recommend deferral of the project.

"We applaud this decision by Supervisor Lusk and will continue to seek engagement with Combined Properties and the community to ensure that the needs of the community are met," the Rose Hill Coalition said in a statement Thursday.

The coalition also urged residents "to stay engaged as this process moves forward."