Article Text
Nearly 18 years after taking charge of Visit Fairfax, Barry Biggar is still pursuing the same major goal he had on his first day: bringing a conference center to Fairfax County.
“We needed it 25 years ago, we need it today,” Biggar told the Fairfax County Planning Commission during a Jan. 28 presentation.
Biggar stressed that he wants a conference center—not a much larger convention center that would compete with facilities in Washington, D.C., Prince George’s County and Baltimore. He said such competition would be unsustainable and potentially an enormous waste of taxpayer money.
The Dulles Expo Center’s closure last month may reinforce his concerns about the convention-center market. The Chantilly venue hosted numerous events during its 25 years in operation, but its owner has leased the building to Ikea.
Biggar instead envisions a conference facility of approximately 140,000 square feet.
That would be far smaller than the 2.3 million-square-foot Walter E. Washington Convention Center, which includes 703,000 square feet of exhibit space. The Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor has about 540,000 square feet of meeting space, while the hotel-connected National Conference Center in Loudoun County offers roughly 265,000 square feet.
Fairfax County’s largest conference facility was long located at the Sheraton Tysons Hotel. The hotel closed in 2020, and the property has been slated for conversion into affordable housing since 2024.
Visit Fairfax currently lists several dozen venues for conference planners, but Biggar believes the county needs something larger. His Planning Commission discussion remained conceptual, without identifying a site, financing plan or development process.
One possibility has emerged in Tysons, where Comstock Companies has proposed a convention center as part of an entertainment complex anchored by a hoped-for casino. Other potential options also remain available.
Biggar raised the broader issue with the Board of Supervisors in November. He said additional revenue from Fairfax County’s transient occupancy tax increase—from 4% to 6% on Oct. 1, 2025—would help expand efforts to attract tourists and business meetings.
Biggar became Visit Fairfax’s CEO in August 2008 after leading the Bryan-College Station Convention & Visitors Bureau in Texas for five years.
Planning Commission Chair Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner praised Biggar’s energetic 30-minute presentation as a “tour-de-force, wonderful conversation” and emphasized the importance of the tourism agency’s work.
The commission is scheduled to hold a similar session March 11 with Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.