Dulles Landing looking at big changes in its future

The huge Dulles Landing shopping center in southern Loudoun County along Highway 50 is looking at making some major changes in the coming years. That’s according to plans filed with the county.

This would include the addition of 600 multi-family residential units, a 200,000 s.f. sports complex, a 125,000 s.f. hotel as well as office buildings and additional retail shops. The news about the plans for Dulles Landing was first reported on Thursday by the Washington Business Journal.

If you’re not familiar with the property, Dulles Landing is currently the home to the Walmart store that serves much of the southern part of Loudoun. It also has many other “big box” stores such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, HomeGoods, TJ Maxx, and a Ross Dress for Less store.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of undeveloped land at the center, and further retail development beyond the existing buildings has been at a standstill for years. Now, the owners of the property are re-envisioning it. You can see some artist’s renderings of the proposal in the slideshow at the top of this story.

They want it to be what is known as a “mixed use center” — where people where people can work, shop and live. To this end, the plans call for the addition of parks and pathways to encourage people to spend more time when they visit Dulles Landing.

The sports complex — or “sports plex” as the filings call it — would include indoor and outdoor fields for local teams and youth leagues to use, according to the WBJ report.

The plans also apparently call for tearing down the buildings where Dick’s as well as Buy Buy Baby and Bed, Bath and Beyond are locating currently in order to put up office buildings, according to the renderings.

If the plans were to be approved — and everything is very preliminary at this point — it would likely unfold over many years. But is shows that just like everything else, developers have to keep up with the times and the changing things people expect from these types of centers.