MWAA Starts Move to Open 3,000 Dulles Airport Acres for Commercial Development

In a report entitled "Dulles seen as potential engine for revenue" on this morning's meeting of the MWAA Board of Directors meeting, Washington Post reporter Mark Berman says,

(One) options looks beyond the airport. The land managed by the authority around Dulles is largely undeveloped, and when Metro’s Silver Line extension reaches the airport in several years, McKeough said, that land will become more vital — and valuable.

“As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to Dulles, the sky’s the limit,” Jack Potter, the authority’s president and chief executive, told board members.

In an interview after his presentation, Potter stressed that there are no specific plans for development of the 3,000 acres surrounding Dulles.

Still, the MWAA board took a step in that direction Wednesday, approving an amendment to the lease that transferred control of the airports from the federal government to the authority in 1987.

The amendment loosens the lease’s restrictions on business in and around the airports. The lease largely restricts land use to business relating to air travel. But under the amendment, as long as the U.S. transportation secretary approves, the authority can use the land around Dulles to generate revenue. . . .

The 3,000 acres is roughly the same acreage as is available in the Tysons and Reston TOD areas and could provide both significant non-aviation lease revenues to MWAA and keen competition for developers in the two key Fairfax County development sites.

And yet the forecast demand for future commercial and residential demand along the Dulles Corridor is shrinking as part of a broader region-wide slowing of growth according to GMU's Center for Regional Analysis.  The greater availability of space and the shrinking growth in demand may make it difficult for significant development throughout the Silver Line corridor all the way to Loudoun County.