Fairfax County’s portion of the gargantuan Rivana at Innovation Station mixed-use development is up for sale, meaning its owners are actively shedding the “at Innovation Station” part of the project’s billing.
The site comprises about 29 acres across four adjacent parcels, three in Fairfax — located at 2205, 2210 and 2214 Rock Hill Road — and one in Loudoun. Together they comprise the eastern end of Rivana, an envisioned 9 million-square-foot development, including office, retail, apartments and parks on more than 100 acres spanning the county line. The property up for sale includes the Center for Innovative Technology building, plus immediate access to the northern entrance of the expanding Silver Line’s Innovation Center Metro Station. The assemblage is now being marketed by JLL as “The Metro District at Innovation Station.”
By prevailing norms, it’s prime, transit-oriented real estate. Which makes it all the more curious that the site’s owners — Chicago-based Origami Capital Partners LLC and Austin, Texas-based Timberline Real Estate Partners — are seeking to sell it. Origami declined to comment. Timberline, JLL and DLA Piper, the land use attorney for Rivana’s Loudoun portion, did not immediately return requests for comment.
In marketing material, JLL calls the site “the last transit-oriented placemaking opportunity on Metro in the Dulles Toll Road Corridor.” Indeed, Origami and Timberline bought it in 2020 for $47.35 million expressly for the purpose of adding Metro access to an earlier version of the project called The Hub.The proposal before Loudoun County, which proposes new development across an initial 80 acres, reiterated that purpose, outlining a “cohesive and expansive vision for development … stretching from Loudoun to Fairfax and connecting the 100-acre site to the Innovation Center Metro Station,” per a May filing.
The for-sale portions start to the west exactly where the Rivana rezoning application ends. Rivana, which is expected to break ground in late 2023 assuming its approval by the Loudoun Board of Supervisors, is expected to include a 313,000-square-foot retail village, 2,700 residential units, 1.8 million square feet of office, a 280-key hotel, a 3,000-seat performing arts venue and two public parks.
The Innovation Center station surely also figures into the Washington Commanders’ recent offer to buy Waterside, another huge development just to Rivana’s north, for the football team’s new stadium-and-entertainment development. The offer was rebuffed, and in any case state legislation that would’ve enabled public financing for the stadium project died in Virginia’s last General Assembly session. But if the deal revives, which conceivably it could in 2023, it’d all but guarantee a huge amount of fan traffic through the Innovation Center Metro station and Rivana’s erstwhile eastern terminus.
Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, D-Dranesville, whose district includes the Metro station, said Rivana’s developers have no active land-use application in Fairfax, as they do in Loudoun. He’s not aware of any administrative or political reason that any forthcoming application would’ve stalled or come off the rails. The developers had always planned to proceed with Loudoun first, then Fairfax.
Foust said it’s “critical that the two projects be coordinated” across the county line. That coordination would’ve been easier with both portions under common ownership, though isn’t precluded under divided ownership, he noted.
“Fairfax is anxious to see this parcel developed,” Foust said. “I believe it’s the most significant development parcel we have in the county at this point.”
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