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“The Silver Line was created for high density development and business owners paid a tax to build the Dulles Access Road and the Silver Line,” Marsden said. “They paid to have that done and if we can put in a conference center in an entertainment district, anchored by a casino and some hotels, it creates a tremendous number of construction jobs, good union jobs, to work in those hotels.”

Related:

Read all of Patch’s reporting on the proposed casino at the Wiehle-Reston East Station at Silver Line Casino.

Marsden declined to confirm whether the Wiehle-Reston East Station was where Comstock intends to build the project.

“I have no idea,” he said. “My conversations have been that Tysons is the preferred option. It’s basic economics. It’s where something is located that is critical. Reston, to my way of thinking, puts us too far away from our potential Maryland customers.”

The lawmaker from Burke made the same assertion when he spoke to Patch in September and to FFXNow earlier this month. Even Williams, who introduced the casino referendum bill in the house of delegates in January, touted Tysons as the desired location during an Oct. 13 interview WMAL.

“Tysons certainly has its share of residents, as does Reston, but it’s the location that they have in mind for it, that they’ve certainly talked about, is where a couple of auto dealerships are right now,” Marsden said. “Not near anything other than one apartment building. It doesn’t impact people’s homes or anything else.”

In Oct. 27, 2022, Comstock submitted a proposal for a mixed-use redevelopment near the Greensboro Metro Station in Tysons, as part of Fairfax County’s Sight Specific Plan Amendment Process.

“The 14-acre property is currently developed with a Koons auto dealership and has been operating as such since 1975,” Comstock said, in its proposal. “As such, the site is largely if not entirely impervious, with most of the land area consisting of asphalt parking lots. In this quadrant of Tysons, the property is bounded by the Tysons Square shopping center to the north and the famed ‘Toilet Bowl’ office building to the west. Meanwhile, directly across Route 7, the expansive five million square-foot Boro mixed-use redevelopment is well underway. A mix of office and retail/personal service uses abut the site across Route 123 to the south.”

Located in the South Subdistrict of the Tysons Central 7 District of the Tysons Urban Center, the northeastern portion of the land is currently planned for Transit Station Mixed-Use and the southwestern half is planned for Residential Mixed-Use.

“The Nominator intends to consolidate the two parcels that comprise the Property, and proposes to replace the existing auto dealership and transform it into a vibrant, mixed-use, multi-block neighborhood, with a mix of approximately 85% multi-family residential and 15% retail uses, replete with additional open space and other amenities called for in the Areawide Recommendations,” the proposal said. “The Nominator respectfully suggests that this infusion of residential mixed use is needed to redress the balance of uses in Tysons, specifically in the office-heavy area in and around the Greensboro Metro Station Transit Station-Mixed Use area.”

Although Comstock didn’t own the two properties they were pitching to redevelop, its proposal included letters from the current owners saying they were “willing to participate in the review, analysis, and community engagement, as needed.”

In making its proposal, Comstock ran up against the Tysons Urban Center section of the Comprehensive Plan, which governed planning for the two properties. Comstock argued that the planned 65 percent of office use was a cap and not a ceiling, meaning that the expectation was not to build to 65 percent of office use on these parcels.

“With the office market reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nominator and Owners believe a mixed-use development with a residential focus will better fulfill the dynamic, 24-7 atmosphere contemplated by the Comprehensive Plan for Tysons, as well as provide a more stable source of ridership for the Silver Line,” the proposal said.

Rather than pursue it any further, Comstock, on the advisement of county staff and with the consent of Supervisor Walter Alcorn (D-Hunter Mill), opted to submit the nomination as a “placeholder,” while county leadership and staff evaluated the current and future mix of office and residential at the project site. The proposal went no further in the SSPA process.

“Tysons is our downtown,” Marsden said on Wednesday. “We either become big time players, or we watch it decline because of technology, reducing the amount of office space that we’ve always relied on to fund our services. That’s just the reality of the situation. Who could have ever predicted that COVID would come along, and that people would no longer need office buildings.”

Even though Marsden pushed Tysons as the perfect spot for an entertainment district with a performance space and conference center anchored by a casino, Comstock already owned a location near the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station that could also be the perfect location.

While the developer pointed to the poor building market as the reason the Tysons location needed more residential units than were allowed by the comprehensive plan, it argued two weeks prior for the county to allow a greater density of office space than was planned — new office buildings — for a project adjacent to the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station.

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