For twenty years, the story residents told about Fair Oaks Mall was that it was slowly emptying out. Apple left for Fairfax Corner in November 2024. Sears had been gone for years. Lord & Taylor closed in 2020 and sat vacant. If you live in Fair Oaks, Fair Lakes, or Penderbrook, you have watched the property age in real time from your car window on Route 50.
That story is out of date. The mall is not being saved by department stores. It is being reassembled around fitness, food, entertainment, and services, and a separate wave of redevelopment on the office campuses across I-66 is about to change what the surrounding corridor looks like from the road. Here is what is actually happening at your closest 1.5 million square feet of commercial real estate.
The former Sears has already turned into four different tenants
The old Sears footprint is the clearest before-and-after on the property. A former 109,000 sq ft two-story Sears was converted into four separate areas including Dave & Buster's, two restaurants, and a new Dick's. The lower level is now occupied by Dick's Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy, while portions of the upper level have been filled by Dave & Buster's and Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar.
If you have not been inside the mall in a year, the sit-down dining list is longer than you remember. The sit-down dining offerings in the mall include restaurant and entertainment facility Dave & Buster's, Cheesecake Factory, Brio Tuscan Grille, Texas de Brazil, Breakers Korean BBQ & Grill, Sushi On, and Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar. That is a different weeknight calculation than the one most Fair Oaks households have been running.
JCPenney is also worth watching, and not for nostalgia. JC Penney remains at Fair Oaks Mall and will become the retailer's only Fairfax County location after the Springfield store closes. Whatever you think of the store, its regional draw is about to concentrate here.
Two anchors are still under construction
The big changes on the timeline right now are Movement and Sky Zone, and they are aimed at very different audiences.
Movement is the climbing, yoga, and fitness operator taking one of the largest remaining boxes. Slated to open in 2026, Movement Fairfax will be a place for people to come together and share their passion for adventure through climbing and fitness with 37,000+ square-feet of climbing, yoga, and fitness, conveniently located right off I-66 at the Fair Oaks Mall. The gym includes 27,000 square feet of climbing terrain spread across two floors. The highest wall is 50 feet. For comparison, until Movement opens, Fairfax County's only dedicated indoor climbing gym is Vertical Rock Climbing and Fitness Center in Tysons, with rock climbing walls also at The St. James in Springfield and at Life Time gym in Reston. That is a real gap in the west-of-Beltway map that Fair Oaks is about to fill.
Sky Zone is the other confirmed anchor and is aimed squarely at families with kids. Sky Zone, the indoor trampoline park chain, confirmed that it is targeting a late 2026 or early 2027 opening at 1750 Fair Oaks Mall #1230, moving into the remaining space left by Sears, according to Emily Leayman of the FFXnow. Fairfax County records show that Sky Zone is in the midst of the permitting process for its Fair Oaks Mall location. Planned attractions include SkySlam basketball dunk areas, foam pits, slides, obstacle courses, zip lines, trampoline courts, single-day tickets, memberships, and birthday party packages.
The third piece is the most consequential for weekly errands. In September 2025, grocery store Fresh World began plans to purchase the former Lord & Taylor anchor space. They plan on opening a 80,000-square-foot supermarket where Lord & Taylor was located. An 80,000 sq ft international grocery inside the mall shell is a category of tenant Fair Oaks has never had at this address.
A quick way to read the property today:
| Space | Status | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Dick's, Golf Galaxy, Dave & Buster's, Lazy Dog (former Sears) | Open | Current |
| Movement climbing, yoga, fitness | Under construction | 2026 |
| Sky Zone trampoline park (remaining Sears space, #1230) | In permitting | Late 2026 / early 2027 |
| Fresh World grocery (former Lord & Taylor) | Under contract | Announced 2025 |
| Macy's, JCPenney | Open, anchors remain | Current |
The ownership change nobody put on a sign
Two facts explain why so much is moving at once. First, the owner situation shifted. CoStar reported that Taubman lost control of Fair Oaks Mall in 2024, underscoring the economic pressure on legacy retail assets and the importance of adaptive reuse. Second, Fairfax County has been writing the long-range plan around a very different building than the one that opened on July 31, 1980. In November, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a plan amendment to redevelop Fair Oaks as a mixed-use community with about 2,000 housing units. The plan recommends converting surface parking to a grid of streets and balancing retail with a mix of residential, office, and hotel uses.
That framework is now being refreshed as part of a larger study. The Fairfax Center Area Planning Study covers roughly 5,500 acres between Route 50 and Route 29, including Fair Oaks Mall, Fairfax Corner, and the Government Center, with a stated goal of a transit-ready, walkable, mixed-use district.
The redevelopments across I-66 that will hit sooner than the mall's
The most immediate physical change to the corridor is not at the mall at all. It is at two office properties a short drive north.
At its Nov. 18, 2025 meeting, the board voted unanimously to amend the county's comprehensive plan and allow the Fair Oaks Business Park and nearby High Ridge office building to be redeveloped with more than 800 new homes. Fair Oaks Business Park owner Peterson Companies has proposed razing the 11 office buildings currently on the 22-acre site near the intersection of Waples Mill Road and Pender Drive. Time Equities, which owns the four-story office building at 3877 Fairfax Ridge Road, is seeking to replace it with a 400-unit multifamily residential building supported by 5,500 square feet of retail space, a podium parking garage, and park space featuring an 8-foot-wide trail along Fairfax Ridge and Waples Mill Road.
Both moved past the plan-amendment stage this past winter. A rezoning application was scheduled to go before the Fairfax County Planning Commission on Feb. 25, 2026, and a separate rezoning application for the Fair Oaks Business Park development is slated for a planning commission public hearing on March 11. Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, whose district includes these sites, framed the shift plainly at the November meeting, saying "This was a commercial area that's not going to be a commercial area. I-66 and the improvements on I-66 has opened this up to residential [development] so people can get to and from our core work areas, Tysons Corner, the urban core, D.C. in a reliable manner."
For a resident, that means the low-rise office fabric you have driven past for two decades on Waples Mill and Fairfax Ridge will look substantially different by the end of the decade, with a new 8-foot trail added on the Time Equities parcel.
A summer weekend that uses the new mix
The point of all of this is not that the mall is fine. The point is that the practical geography of a Saturday in Fair Oaks now includes options that were not on the table three years ago. A version of the day that only draws from confirmed 2026 programming:
- Morning coffee and a walk somewhere shady, then head to Burke Lake Park Amphitheater for a free family show. The 2026 series runs through mid-August with 124 scheduled shows across more than 30 venues, down from 189 in 2025 after a $136,000 budget reduction in the FY2026 budget, and Burke Lake Park Amphitheater sits at 7315 Ox Road, Fairfax Station, VA 22039, about fifteen minutes south.
- Grocery run at whichever store you use now, with the understanding that the plan is to open a 80,000-square-foot supermarket where Lord & Taylor was located and reshape the western side of the mall.
- Dinner at the mall itself, which now competes on the sit-down list rather than the food-court one.
- Evening indoor climbing session for teens or adults once Movement opens.
- Birthday planning gets a new local option when Sky Zone comes online in the same footprint.
- Rain plan: call the concert hotline at 571-202-SHOW (7469) before leaving home. Cancellations are updated online and via hotline one hour prior to the showtime.
That is not a real estate story. That is a weekend, and it uses buildings your neighbors have been writing off.
Why current owners should care about any of this
If you already own here, none of this shows up on a Zestimate the day the permit is filed. It shows up in the softer stuff first: how easy it is to talk to friends about coming out to Fair Oaks, how often the mall parking lot fills on a Saturday, whether the corridor reads as improving or fading when a relocating buyer drives it for the first time. Active, relevant commercial nodes tend to hold neighborhood confidence better than corridors with visible long-term vacancy, and the direction of travel on this property is now clearly toward active.
The corridor between Route 50 and I-66 is going to look and feel different by 2028. Movement will be open. Sky Zone should be open. Fresh World's grocery will likely be online. Peterson's and Time Equities' housing projects will be in various phases of construction. The Fairfax Center Area plan will have moved out of survey rooms and into site plans.
If you would like to talk through what those changes mean for the specific block you live on, whether you are thinking about a sale in the next few years or simply want a clear read on what is coming, Katrina Funkhouser works this corridor closely and can walk you through it. Let's connect.
