Fairfax City BAR hears updated design, material and streetscape plans for Courthouse Plaza redevelopment; board presses for clearer massing and façade work

Fairfax City’s Board of Architectural Review spent much of its March 19 work session probing design choices and long‑term tradeoffs in a proposed redevelopment of the Courthouse Plaza shopping center, a large retail property at 10300 Willard Way (case BAR2400008).

The applicant team, represented by Molly Novotny of Curata Partners and designers from Hickok Cole and Land Design, presented revisions intended to answer comments from prior hearings: more articulated massing, additional retail distributed along a newly extended internal street, an internal residential parking garage, and a refined material palette. Anna, the city staff presenter, reviewed six special‑exception requests tied to zoning and the Old Town Fairfax transition overlay district and urged more information on sight lines, façade detailing and tree replacement.

Why it matters: the site sits in a key downtown activity center. The board’s recommendation will go to the City Council on the project’s major certificate of appropriateness and the special exceptions; those determinations will shape building height, street character and how much of the existing shopping center is changed now versus in a possible later phase.

What the applicants proposed and what staff flagged

Molly Novotny said the team is phasing the work and currently controls the portion of the property shown in the plan set; she said staff required the project team to calculate density across the entire roughly 8.73‑acre parcel even though only a portion is being redeveloped now. Novotny reported that the team raised ground‑floor retail from…