Construction on a new nine-story office building in Virginia Square is now complete, concluding the decade-plus process of redeveloping the site near Arlington Central Library.
Thirteen years after Arlington Funeral Home closed in 2011 with the expectation of an office building taking its place at 3901 N. Fairfax Drive, developer and construction company Skanska announced last week that those plans have finally come to fruition.
The 201,000-square-foot building comes with an 8,000-square-foot public plaza and 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. It promises a “future-focused workplace” with an emphasis on fresh air, daylight and outdoor spaces.
“The dynamic indoor / outdoor spaces at 3901 Fairfax are the ideal setting for fostering innovation and collaboration in one of the most desirable corridors in the D.C. metropolitan area,” said Mark Carroll, executive vice president of Skanska’s D.C. operations. “In collaboration with Arlington County, we were able to integrate feedback from the surrounding community into 3901 Fairfax’s design and sustainability features to create an impressive building and public space.”
The Arlington County Board originally approved a site plan for the space back in 2012. Though existing structures were demolished, development plans languished for years and the site instead became a parking lot for the nearby Mercedes-Benz dealership.
Skanska purchased the property in 2019 and announced plans to break ground on the site in 2021.
The design for the new building is based largely on the original site plans approved all those years ago, with a similar shape and floor-to-ceiling windows, a Skanska spokesperson previously told ARLnow. Notably, it lacks a 12,985-square-foot black box theater included in the original plans but removed, with the county’s blessing, in 2018.
Located in between the Ballston and Virginia Square Metro stations and south of Quincy Park and Central Library, the building includes a fitness center, private tenant terraces and a penthouse conference space that leads out to a 3,500-square-foot rooftop terrace.
“3901 Fairfax was constructed to redefine the conventional office space, prioritizing materials such as lower carbon concrete and a dedicated outside air system to make the most of the sustainable impact we deliver through our business,” said Dale Kopnitsky, general manager and executive vice president responsible for Skanska’s D.C. operations.
“Using our co-developed Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3 tool), embodied carbon came in 31 percent below the 2021 EC3 industry baseline,” he added. “We’re proud to deliver this dynamic and sustainable workspace to the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor.”
