Nearby

So, then, it’s not idle boasting when Gerald L. Gordon, the longtime president and CEO of the influential Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, describes Fairfax as “one of the premier places in America to work and live.” Gordon and the EDA, in fact, have played a crucial role in the county’s pell-mell growth over the last 30 years. Starting in the mid-1970s, when it got sufficient funding, the EDA created marketing and advertising campaigns designed specifically to persuade outside businesses to move to Fairfax. It was a strategy born of necessity: At that time, the county’s property tax rate was onerous and, as Gordon recalls, local officials were asking, “‘Who’s going to pay for new schools and new libraries?’ The answer was the business community.”

Indeed, thanks to the county’s proximity to federal power and to the efforts of the EDA (which has a $7 million budget and a full-time staff of 34, including a handful of foreign reps in such places as Frankfurt, London, Seoul and Bangalore), major businesses have flocked to Fairfax. In the early days came Exxon Mobil, TRW and AT&T. Many others followed—from other parts of America and abroad—and all now shoulder a significant share of the tax load. There are more than 350 foreign-owned businesses in the county alone, one of the latest being Volks­wagen, which recently moved its U.S. headquarters to Fairfax. Science Applications International Corp., a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company, recently announced that it is moving its headquarters from San Diego to Fairfax—and intends to invest $25 million in the state and create 1,200 new jobs. As a result of this steady migration of corporations to northern Virginia, the county’s property rate has plunged—from $1.74 per $100,000 of assessed value in the mid-1970s to $1.04 today, despite the fact that the Fairfax County population over that time period has doubled.

Gordon doesn’t dispute the fact that government money has powered Fairfax County’s prolonged boom. But he notes that neighboring Maryland counties enjoy the same benefit and yet have not matched Fairfax’s growth. He credits local, county and state politicians who, he says, have been “consistently supportive and pro-business” since the mid-1970s. “We also have a very efficient and effective local government—that’s very important. People pay a tax and expect to get value for it, and they do in Fairfax County.”

As might be expected in a place that moves fast, Fairfax is changing. Big wheels are in motion. Since the 1940s, or earlier, the county has gone through at least two sweeping transformations—shifting first from its dairy farm roots to that of a D.C. bedroom community, and then after that becoming a symbol for the nation’s breakneck suburban growth. And another upheaval is coming. Over the next 30 years, pockets of Fairfax will morph from being suburban to genuinely urban—starting with Tysons Corner, which is considered the county’s downtown.