Dream to Revive Old Va. Store Now Budget, Blight Nightmare

Was it real or something Norman Rockwell dreamed up? Five girls racing hand-in-hand to the corner store after school, their dress shoes clicking on the worn floor. Coca-Cola barrels filled with ice and soda, homemade pies and a glass case overflowing with every kind of candy.

That very real memory lit up in Marilyn Breedlove Giampa's mind four years ago when she decided to buy Shepherd's Store. By then, the shop and farmhouse in the Mason Neck section of Fairfax County was hardly the inviting place she recalls frequenting with her four closest girlfriends. It was a wreck that had become home to squatters.

With dreams of restoring the store to its former glory, Giampa paid nearly $1 million for the rickety old structure and the debris-strewn land around it.

Now the property has become the subject of a county blight investigation, which in extreme cases can end in demolition.

"If I could get my hands on a quick $300,000," she said, laughing, "you know, quick, a lottery ticket or something, I'd get it done in a heartbeat." But that is probably not going to happen, she said.

That doesn't mean the project is dead. She would not let go of her dream so easily. Giampa, 45, grew up in Mason Neck and bought the property in 2005 after coveting it for years. The former caterer was so thrilled that she threw a party beneath the sagging portico, with fried chicken and a bluegrass band -- and, of course, homemade pies. A tin can collected $700 in donations.

Then she discovered the rot that had penetrated deep into the 150-year-old beams. A couple years later, her father died. And the banking crisis crippled her family's real estate appraisal business, bringing the project to a virtual standstill. Neighbors complained to the county that the weathered plywood and construction scraps were a blight on the neighborhood, one of Fairfax's last rural enclaves, and its historic houses and multimillion-dollar mansions.

Giampa put up vinyl siding and windows this month to show the county that the project is continuing, a gesture that has improved the appearance of the property and mollified officials. But Giampa has big dreams, little experience and not much money. And Christina M. Sadar is watching.

Sadar, a former police officer, is the county's blight abatement coordinator. Since 1996, the county has been going after owners of abandoned, ramshackle properties that pose a safety hazard and annoy neighbors.

In rare cases -- about a dozen times since 1996 and seven since Sadar was hired in 2002 -- Fairfax has failed to persuade absentee homeowners to do the upkeep. That's when the county brought in the bulldozers, which is allowed under state law. It then put liens on the properties to recoup the cost of the demolition.

Two weeks ago, the county demolished a house in Burke that was ravaged by fire on Valentine's Day 2006. The owner, who lives elsewhere, had taken initial steps to tear down the house, but she stopped responding to county inquiries, according to Sadar's file. Another demolition is scheduled for this week in Falls Church.

Sadar knows each case by heart and can remember every address, every name. She tries to help the families avoid demolition, an eventuality she does not relish, she said. She sees her job as part enforcement official and part social worker.