The County Board of Supervisors is set to hear the appeal Tuesday. Fairfax has already approved putting the control room at the site of an existing Metro power substation near Fisher Avenue and Great Falls Street in Falls Church. The building is adjacent to Brilyn Park, a quiet neighborhood of single-family houses close to the West Falls Church Metro station and Interstate 66.
However, project officials learned that the approved site would require the relocation of underground electrical and water lines. According to the airports authority, that work, and the design and construction of the room, would add the additional time.
Instead, the authority is seeking to build the control room south of Fisher Avenue, where it would be set back 25 feet from the street behind I-66. This location would allow visual inspections because Metro workers would have a direct line of sight from the control room to the location where the Orange Line ties into the extension, officials said in their request.
But the Fairfax Planning Commission denied the request last month, noting that the 25-foot setback was out of character for the neighborhood, where most houses are 40 to 50 feet from streets.
Fisher Avenue residents also oppose a second Metro building off their street, saying that the power substation already attracts litter, graffiti and loiterers.
“Whenever I pass by, I have a plastic bag and just pick up litter,” said Susan Barth, a Fisher Avenue resident and spokeswoman for the Brilyn Park Neighborhood Association.
Planning commissioner Jay Donahue, who represents Brilyn Park, said the control room should be consolidated with the power substation. Otherwise, “the neighborhood would be effectively encumbered by two sites stretching 200 feet or more down the block of a currently tree-lined, quiet and stable community,” Donahue said before the April 6 decision.
Project officials say they are making efforts to limit the proposed site’s impact on neighbors. They say the location is 110 feet from the nearest house; the site of the power substation is only about 60 feet away. The control room, which would be about 550 square feet and 12 feet high, would include a 15-foot-high screen wall. Officials say 10- to 15-foot-high trees would be planted at the site. They hope to have the control room built sometime in the summer and to install electrical hookups over Columbus Day weekend.
If the appeal is denied, officials said, the rail project could be delayed about eight months, meaning the first phase of the Silver Line would open in 2014 instead of late 2013. The airports authority would have to pay the contractor overhead costs of as much as $300,000 a day of delay, according to terms of the contract.
The first phase of the extension, which is costing $2.75 billion, connects with the existing rail system near East Falls Church and consists of four stations in Tysons Corner and one at Wiehle Avenue in Reston. Fairfax is funding its share of the extension through a special tax district.
The Board of Supervisors has until June 7 to make a decision on the appeal.
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