MITRE To Expand With New High Rises In Tysons

TYSONS, VA—This week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors granted the MITRE Corporation permission to expand its Tysons campus, which includes four new nine-story buildings, a parking garage and a development plan for a future 15-story building. Residents in one local neighborhood are concerned about the impacts of traffic and the high rises.

The four new nine-story buildings, and 1,500-space parking garage will be on the southern end of the campus. Like the current buildings, they will be interconnected with pedestrian bridges and walkways.

The company plans to keep its current Mitre 2, 3 and 4 buildings and eventually tear down the six-story Mitre 1 and replace it with a four-story building with classrooms, meetings rooms and event space for visitors. The most recent addition had been the MITRE 4 building in 2016.

MITRE's Mitre’s 22-acre campus is located close to the McLean Metro Station near the Pimmit Hills neighborhood in Falls Church, where residents have started a petition expressing concerns. Residents are concerned about the nine-story high rises being directly next Westgate Elementary School and impacting real estate values.

Residents are also worried about county plans to expand a road that separates Pimmit Hills from Tysons developments. Under traffic plans to accommodate development, Magarity Road will become a four-lane road from Great Falls Street to Leesburg Pike. Residents are calling for the county to suspend these plans and mitigate traffic car through residential streets as the development increases traffic.

The residents' demands stem from larger concerns about Tysons developments, which could bring a significant amount of new residents to the area. A number of other projects are under construction around MITRE and the McLean Metro station. The Scotts Run South development will have 17 new buildings with up 6.6 million square feet in offices, housing, retail and a hotel. The first residential building, The Haden, opened with 425 apartment units in 2016.

Another project, Anderson Park will become the largest single residential development in Tysons with up to 2,571 residential units. The existing 13 low-rise garden apartments will be replaced with seven new high rises. The Kingston, the first of these new buildings, had been completed last year.

Images via Fairfax County