Whose Idea Was It To Put A Casino In Tysons?
TYSONS, VA — With a decline in commercial tax revenue looming, Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon), the majority leader of the Virginia Senate, has been a strong advocate for building a casino in Tysons.
“When you see commercial office buildings in this county selling at a third of the price they did five years ago,” Surovell told the audience at Supervisor Dan Storck’s (D-Mount Vernon) annual district meeting on Feb. 10. “We have a big commercial property tax crunch in this county, which is why one of the things you heard about was a Fairfax casino this year in Tysons.”
Patch first broke the news last September that Comstock Holding Companies, a Reston Station-based developer, was seeking to build a casino somewhere on the Silver Line outside of the Capital Beltway in Fairfax County. To support this effort, the company created its own political action committee and donated more than $1.2 million to the campaigns of candidates running in state and local elections.
Find out what's happening in Restonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
State Sen. Dave Marsden (D-Burke) introduced bills during both the 2023 and 2024 general assembly sessions that, if passed, would give the board of supervisors the authority to put a referendum on a ballot. Voters would then get to decide whether a casino should be built in Tysons. The 2024 bill was held over in committee until the 2025 session.
On Tuesday morning, Fairfax County Executive Bryan Hill released his Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal, which included a suggested 4-cent increase in the residential real estate rate. One of the reasons he gave for the one-penny increase was a drop of 16.16 percent in the commercial real estate tax revenue in FY 2024 and an estimated 15.58 percent decline for FY 2025.
Find out what's happening in Restonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
To offset this decline in tax revenue, Surovell pointed to the MGM National Harbor Casino in neighboring Maryland as an example of a possible new revenue stream for Virginia.
“They see over a billion dollars a year in table game revenue going through there every year,” he said. “When we studied this five years ago in Fairfax, they said the most valuable casino opportunity in Virginia is in Tysons, and that’s one of the reasons I supported that casino and Tysons would save everybody in this room about $500 a year in property taxes, because the revenue was generated off of tourists, not for people out of the state and people coming to visit.”
Patch reached out to Surovell by email to confirm which study he was referring to that singled out Tysons as the “most valuable casino opportunity” in Virginia. He responded that he was referring to the Gaming in the Commonwealth report that the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission released in 2019.
The JLARC report was created to study the impact of awarding casino licenses to five economically strapped localities in the state. While the report included a scenario in which a casino in Northern Virginia would generate $155 million and employ an additional 3,200 workers, it did not specifically identify Tysons as the location of that casino.
Nowhere does the word “Tysons” appear in the 2019 JLARC report nor do any other specific localities from Northern Virginia — not Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, Loudoun and Fauquier counties nor any cities in the area, such as Alexandria, which are typically included as part of the region.
Patch contacted Senator Marsden by email last week, asking why Tysons was chosen as the location for the casino. No response has been received.
After the Reston Association met with Marsden in January, he agreed to amend the language of SB 675 to ensure that any of the three Reston Metro stations were not included as possible sites for the proposed casinos. The only Silver Line stations that fit were Tysons, Greensboro and Spring Hill.
Marsden had previously identified the abandoned Exclusive Automotive Group lot at 8546 Leesburg Pike near the Spring Hill Metro station as the proposed location for the casino.
The old car lot happens to be located next to the Tysons The View development, which was owned by Tysons Development LLC. That company is a partnership between Saudi Arabian businessman Khaled Juffali and the Clemente Development Company, which was founded by the father of Comstock CEO Christopher Clemente.
One of the rationales Surovell has given as a reason to build the casino in Tysons was for Fairfax County to identify different revenue streams in order to diversify its tax base.
During a business conference hosted by Bisnow last Thursday in Reston Station, Comstock Chief Operating Officer Tim Steffan was asked what Fairfax County leaders could do to improve the development process, while making sure they “don’t kill the golden goose?”
“I think they should be open-minded as it relates to revenue sources, given the tremendous hit they’re taking in the commercial office space,” Steffan said. “The tax base has decreased. How can we make up for that? Right now, you need to think about how you can do that. If they don’t come up with alternative revenue sources outside of doubling the taxes on our houses, the golden goose is going to be in trouble.”
Citizen Activists Keep Opposition To Tysons Casino Alive
Andrew Pavord, a resident of Providence District, told the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that studies have show that most casino revenue comes at the expense of other local businesses.
“Casino tax revenue is a substitute for tax revenue lost from local businesses that lose customers to the casino. A recent Federal Reserve study recognizes that substitution effects may be so powerful that they overcome gaming revenue, leading to negative net revenue for both the state and the county. If you don’t believe that just look at Maryland’s $2 billion deficit. Casinos have not solved Maryland’s fiscal crisis.”
Although enabling legislation in the Virginia General Assembly for the proposed Tysons casino is on hold until next year, a group of Fairfax County citizen activists wanted local leaders to know that the was not dead and still presented a risk to the community.
“We look to our elected officials to protect us from special interests who believe money can overpower common sense,” said Denis Hayes of Reston. He and Pavord joined other members of the No Casino Coalition voiced their opposition to the proposed casino, during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s board meeting. “We look to you to stop downstate officials from dictating what is best for Fairfax. We look to you to send a message that Fairfax is not for sale.”
The citizen activists who spoke at Tuesday’s board meeting listed a number of reasons why Tysons was a terrible place to build a casino. Not only would it add more cars to an area already known for its traffic congestion and negatively impact the three schools located near the proposed casino site, but it would drive away businesses that have contributed to Tysons’ thriving economy.
Read testimony of No Casino Coalition members:
Read all of Patch’s reporting on Comstock Companies’ plan to build a casino on Metro’s Silver Line in Fairfax County at Silver Line Casino.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
Click Here: wests tigers shirt