The first new townhomes at Featherstone Station are now selling.
The townhomes represent some the newest construction in the area in more than 50 years, and are located near the intersection of Route 1 and Featherstone Road in Woodbridge.
All of the 118 new homes built will be 3-level townhomes with garages. Thirty of the homes will be “fee simple,” meaning homeowners will handle upkeep, trash service, electricity, water, and every other aspect of home ownership. The owners in the remainder of the homes will pay a $199 condo association fee that will ensure those worries are taken care of.
These new townhomes are located adjacent to single family homes built in the 1950s, and the Featherstone Square shopping center built in 1960.
“We’re trying to separate ourselves from anything else in the area. We’re going for a more luxury look, so anything facing Featherstone Road will have full brick front, will have a stone wall and privacy fencing throughout,” said Mary Callahan, the sales and marketing representative for Featherstone Station. “The HOA is putting in a lot of landscaping, more than any I typically see in any other townhome community.”
Woodbridge is seeing more luxury housing developments like this one pop up alongside brown spot retail developments. The tenants at Featherstone Square are excited about the potential for new businesses; they’re just not sure what’s going to happen to the shopping center in which they pay monthly rent for their storefronts.
“We have a lot of customers coming in and asking us when they are going to tear down the shopping center,” said Annia Jaffa, owner of Nyea’s Party.
Jaffa is one year into her five-year lease. Business is slow, and a Food Lion located across from her shop does little to draw in ancillary business.
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Other merchants here said the same thing. They get customers becuase of the marketing and advertising they do, and not because foot traffic in the shopping center.
Elm Street Development owns Featherstone Square, and has been the driving force behind the new townhome development. It wants to bring more foot traffic to the to Featherstone Square by adding more homes on what today is mostly a unused parking lot inside the shopping center. They also want to renovate the existing shopping center — not tear it down.
The developer is in early talks with the county about the prospect of adding up to 300 new homes — most likely similar to those built at Featherstone Station — to the existing 190,000 square feet of retail and office space already there.
Jaffa’s shop is a part of a small row of stores the retail center. Larger spaces — once home to an antique store, and before it a pharmacy and auto parts store, and the now closed restaurant “Kilroys” turned “K2” — sit empty. Much of the office space in the rear of the center is also vacant.
The shopping center, however, is making money, said Elm Street Development Vice President Joseph Jacobs.
“It’s a performing center,” he said.
Jacobs secured a rezoning from the Prince William County Board of Supervisors in 2013 which allowed for the new townhomes at Featherstone Station to be built. The county’s planning staff recommended against rezoning the land because it was zoned for urban mixed use, not residential. Woodbridge District Supervisor Frank Principi agreed.
But the Board approved the rezoning in a 5-1 vote on September 10, 2013. Supervisor Maureen Caddigan made the motion for approval and said the shopping center was “dying,” and that something needed to be done to reverse the trend.
The 2013 rezoning came with $2.8 million in cash proffers, according to county documents, which are commonly paid by developers to offset impacts to county services like water, fire and rescue, schools, and for transportation improvements. It was just short of the $3 million in proffers the county wanted.
Today, Jacobs said the county has increased its proffer ask by 23%, and that could be the nail in the coffin on any future deal to remake Featherstone Square.
“We’re not going just go in and build a mixed-use center to simply remake the shopping center, and pay all of the proffers they’re asking for because it wouldn’t be a good business decision,” said Jacobs.
Officials with the county’s development office said the project is still too early in the negotiation phase to comment on it.
A McDonalds located inside the shopping plaza would likely be rebuilt, said Callahan. A spokeswoman at Rosenthal Properties, a firm hired to manage the shopping center, said they are always looking for new tenants to fill empty spaces.
“Featherstone Square” signs will be erected at the shopping center once work to widen Route 1 from four to six lanes in front of the shopping center, said Jacobs.
A crosswalk will also be needed to bridge the gap between Featherstone Station and the shopping center. And there are plans to add a center turn lane on Featherstone Road to make it easier for drivers to make a left turn into the housing development, said Callahan.
If new homes are approved at Featherstone Square, a new community center would be built to service residents of both developments, she added.
