Herndon is getting a brand new “town center” development, called Arrowbrook Centre. While work on the actual town center hasn’t started yet, a 6-acre wetlands park broke ground earlier this year. The first phase will include 422,000 square feet of office space, 160,000 square feet of specialty retail/restaurant space and 407 luxury apartment homes. Eventually the project, which is near the future Route 28 Silver Line Metro station, will encompass 2 million square of office, residential, and retail space.

Brown is residential, pink is office, blue is hotel, green is parkland, and red (or darker pink) is retail. Red diagonal marks are ground level retail.

Arrowbrook will occupy former farm fields at the intersection of Sunrise Valley Drive and Centreville Road, by an exit ramp off the Dulles Toll Road. But the area is nowhere near rural. In fact, this is the last undeveloped, non-park farm in the area. On a walk from either Metro station, riders will pass a sea of asphalt, from the ample parking surrounding three story office parks to the high-speed, four-lane Sunrise Valley Drive that is one of the area’s main conduits.

While Arrowbrook uses a more connected street grid, the side where most Silver Line riders will approach Arrowbrook has poor connectivity today. However, the project has built a road around the backside that can be opened up to future development.

The park will feature an all weather soccer field, small amphitheater, jogging trails, and more. Normally building a new park so close to transit would be a bad idea, but because there is another wetlands park that truly will border on the Herndon Monroe Metro station, hopefully this park will someday serve as the replacement for the original one.