Blog posts are the personal views of Letty Hardi and not official statements or records on behalf of the Falls Church City Council

Dear Friends,

A lot is happening in the Little City this weekend:

• In person early voting at City Hall starts today. Besides voting for US Senator and 8th District Congressman, there are also three state constitutional amendments on the ballot – marriage equality, reproductive freedom, and automatic voting rights restoration. Many people may not know about those amendments so help spread the word!
• Saturday is the 50th annual Falls Church Festival, which is perfect timing – eat up before the Sunday morning’s Run for the Schools 5K. I’ll see you at both!

City Council took an important step on Virginia Village and affordable housing. Due to procurement rules, I’m limited in what I can share, but I’ll provide context on where we are in the process and what you can expect next. I’m also looking forward to a conversation about making democracy a little less mysterious next weekend. Finally, I’ll share a few questions I’ve been getting for years, including two that landed in my inbox this week. If you’re a long time reader, some of these should be familiar to you by now.

We’ll be meeting on a Tuesday next week instead of Monday due to Yom Kippur. Look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week

(1) Virginia Village – we picked a partner

On Monday night, after 3+ hours in closed session discussion (due to procurement laws) – City Council accepted the recommendation of the Virginia Village Proposals Evaluation Committee and identified Urban Atlantic as the top-ranked development team for the redevelopment of Virginia Village in a unanimous 7-0 vote. You can see Urban Atlantic’s executive summary and conceptual design here.

The next step is negotiating an Interim Agreement, which will allow the City and developer to begin more detailed design, due diligence and financial feasibility work and then in early 2027, a Comprehensive Agreement and Site Plan. This is a good summary of where we are in the process and the upcoming milestones. While picking a partner to embark on the next steps is a big milestone, there are many more miles to go.

If you’re just catching up and asking why here and why now? Affordable housing remains one of the City’s highest priorities. The City has strategically acquired properties at Virginia Village over the past 5 years, with the goal of preserving and expanding affordability through redevelopment. The RFP specifically sought proposals that would preserve and expand access to affordable housing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other important considerations — neighborhood design, open space, transportation, infrastructure, financial feasibility, and making sure the eventual project works for the surrounding community and the City as a whole. We need more housing options, and we especially need more housing that is affordable to people who work and live here. That has been a priority of mine since my first election, and it continues to be one of the issues I hear about most from residents.

(2) Demystifying Democracy

Next Saturday, September 26, I’ll be on a panel for Demystifying Democracy as part of the Falls Church 250 commemoration. This will be a practical conversation about how to get involved in democracy. This is an event I’m particularly excited about because increasing civic engagement has been a long standing goal.

(One of the reasons I started writing regularly was pretty simple: I think government works better when people understand how it works. That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree. In fact, disagreement is a healthy part of democracy. But I’ve found over the years that it’s much easier to have productive conversations when we’re starting with the same basic set of facts — and when people know where to go to get answers, how decisions actually get made, and how they can participate. Keep the questions and thoughts coming!)

So if you’ve ever wondered what City Council actually does, how to get involved in a board or commission, how to make your voice heard, or what happens after you send that very passionate email to your elected officials, come join us next Saturday.

(3) FAQs from this week

I’ve been doing these FAQ posts for a while. In fact, my last FAQ edition was #7, back in 2023. At the time, I wrote that if we can start from the same base of accurate information, it’s much easier to find common ground and move forward together. I still believe that.

And two questions I’ve gotten this week are actually questions I’ve been answering, in various forms, for years.

Q: “Has all this mixed-use development added many students to our schools?”

A: This one comes up a lot. The short answer is: no, and not nearly as many as you might assume from looking at how much housing we’ve added.

Our overall FCCPS enrollment has remained relatively stable and is now back around 2,700 students, which was our pre-Covid enrollment (these are Sept 2026 opening day numbers – we will know official stats from FCCPS after September 30 when the count is official). The annual “Students by Dwelling Unit”, aka where students live, data from FCCPS shows that students living in newer mixed-use buildings have represented roughly 9–11% of the total school population over the past decade.

We’ve added about 30% more housing stock and population since 2010, but most of our mixed-use development to date has been relatively small apartments and condos to diversify our tax base, which generally house fewer school-aged children than larger single-family homes. I can understand how someone could look at our new buildings and assume that more housing automatically means dramatically more students. But the actual data doesn’t support that conclusion.

That said, we need more middle housing and options for families to live in Falls Church too!

Q: “Does mixed-use development actually help the City’s finances?”

A: Yes. And we actually track this.

The City periodically does a “report card” on how our mixed-use developments are performing financially. The most recent analysis, completed at the end of 2025, found that the nine mixed-use developments included in the analysis generated approximately $4.5M in net fiscal benefit to the City — meaning after accounting for the cost of providing City services.

Putting money aside – it’s also worth remembering what those properties looked like before redevelopment. Mixed-use projects often replaced underperforming commercial properties and surface parking with a combination of housing, retail and commercial space, significantly increasing the tax base. Besides welcoming new neighbors, who become customers who help sustain the small businesses we all want to keep in Falls Church, we’ve also added more vibrancy.

A related question is why don’t we just build more commercial buildings and collect the revenues without the housing? Besides the fact that there is still strong need for housing (our new buildings have been filling up as expected), the office and retail markets have changed dramatically and there is far less demand for commercial space. Office vacancy rates in neighboring Arlington and Fairfax Counties remain in the low 20% range and they’ve begun to convert office parks and older office stock into housing.

A healthy city needs a diverse tax base, and that means being open minded about what the market can support vs just demanding real estate uses that may be unrealistic.

What’s Coming Up:

Tuesday, September 22 – City Council Work Session

Monday, September 28 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, October 5 – City Council Work Session*

*Mondays (except 5th Mondays and holidays) at 7:30 pm. You can access the agenda and livestream here, including recordings of past meetings

Letty’s Fall Office Hours:

Tuesday, October 20 – 630-8 pm (The Cheese Cartel)

Wednesday, November 18 – 630-8 pm (Lucky Thai)