After a one month hiatus on public meetings, the new schedule for the planning commission was posted for September this week. It came as a big surprise that the Greensboro Place project, Meridian’s rezoning at the SAIC headquarters in Tysons, has been deferred again to a new date… this time in Spring of 2015. This is a real shame because the project has a lot of good elements that people have been waiting for, including the pocket park to be located at a popular food truck stop which could grow to include special activities and after work events.
There is no word yet on why the project has been deferred, the typical cause is outstanding items needing resolution between the developers and staff. Within that realm, the usual suspects are VDOT who hold up many projects in order to attain traffic studies, right of way acquisitions, and other vehicular oriented elements. This was the case with a project close by to Greensboro Place, Tysons West, which saw a nearly one year delay caused by a pending traffic study.
I personally was looking forward to this project beginning sooner rather than later, as it geographically it is as close as Arbor Row to the Park Crest community in North Tysons and has a significant ground level retail presence proposed due to the existing and extensive office population on the block. It would also create a much needed road link parallel to Westpark Drive, which could perhaps remove the need for the absurd multi-lane left turn that currently exists at the over-sized intersection.
We’ll try to get more information about what the issues that are outstanding might be, or if this is a market driven delay.