Mobil’s huge property, marked in red. Click to enlarge.

In 1987 the Mobil gasoline corporation moved its corporate headquarters from New York to Merrifield, Virginia. It was a major coup for the DC region, and a big early step in the growth of Fairfax County as a major corporate base. In the style of the times and befitting a major corporation, they built and occupied a massive campus-style building, set back literally acres from any of the surrounding highways. The site is pictured at right.

12 years later, in 1999, Mobil merged with Exxon to form what is today the 3rd largest corporation in the world. ExxonMobil’s headquarters set up in Irving, TX, in suburban Dallas. The Merrifield office became the Downstream headquarters, directing refining, manufacturing and marketing.

And now they are vacating their 1.2 million square foot behemoth office building and consolidating their offices in Houston – the oil capital of America.

Apparently they are shopping the building to other prospective office tenants. Fairfax County says they don’t expect it to be vacant for long.

But should this building still be used? It’s a private fortress set in a huge forest, amidst an otherwise urbanizing area. It’s a dinosaur of 20th Century planning. Inefficient use of land, laid out to require everyone to drive, and surrounded by “open space” that’s impractical for anyone to use as an actual park. Bad bad bad.

On the other hand, it’s a huge piece of land at an absolutely great location. It would make a fantastic town center development. The land is too far from Dunn Loring Metro to be walkable, so it wouldn’t be a TOD, but it could easily accommodate a Reston Town Center or Shirlington-like development, which if not perfect would still be a big improvement over sprawl. And who knows, regional transportation planners are starting to discuss the possibility of light rail on Gallows Road (pdf, see page 2, item #8), so maybe in a few decades that transit connection will be there after all.

It’s unfortunate that the region will lose all the jobs associated with Mobil, but it would be even more unfortunate if this opportunity to redevelop one of the prime pieces of real estate in Fairfax County were missed.