The Connection

McLean business leaders learned about the history behind the shaping of the ever-expanding Tysons area and how one man played a pivotal role in transforming it from farmland to urban core.

The late Gerald “Jerry” Halpin pioneered the development of Tysons during his career as co-founder and owner of West Group Management LLC, a developer of commercial, residential, and industrial facilities. The Greater McLean Chamber of Commerce hosted an intimate breakfast this month where Halpin’s legacy was rehashed and diners learned how he and his company envisioned Tysons as an urban office and shopping hot spot well before anyone else.

As the group dined at J. Gilbert’s in McLean, John Ulfelder, the Dranesville District Fairfax County Planning Commissioner, spoke about the late real estate guru’s risky investment that he, family members and business partners made in the 1960s, which made his company one of the single largest Tysons landowners.

The Beginning of Tysons: 1962

“Well, 1962 was an extremely important year,” Ulfelder told the group. “That was the year that the sections of the [Capital] Beltway opened … It was the year that the [Washington Dulles International Airport] construction was completed and the airport was dedicated, along with the [Dulles Access Road] — no toll road.”

That year, Fairfax County also approved the rezoning for the Tysons Corner Center mall that would open in 1968 and began a comprehensive planning process for the area, according to Ulfelder.

“There was a lot of focus, a lot of attention,” he said.

Another event happened in 1962 that was key to shaping Tysons into what it is today, which involved the Ulfelder family.

“Jerry Halpin got on a plane with my uncle Rudy Seeley and he flew to Mexico … to go meet with my grandmother to talk to her about having her put portions of her remaining farmland in with Jerry and his partners,” Ulfelder said.

Halpin and his West Group partners — Thomas “Tom” Nicholson, Rudolph “Rudy” Seeley and Charles “Chuck” Ewing — successfully combined the Ulfelder and Storm family dairy farms to form a property of about 260 acres, which they developed into the Westgate Office Park later that year, Ulfelder said.

Again, Ulfelder reiterated that there was, “a lot going on in 1962.”

Immediately, West Group sold off small portions of land in the office park to generate cash and capital to build out the development, “step-by-step,” Ulfelder said.

“They put themselves, their houses, their families at financial risk because they believed in what they were doing and they had confidence in what they were doing,” Ulfelder said.

Later, West Group’s portfolio in the area would total over 500 acres, according to Ulfelder.

“Jerry saw the opportunity sooner than some others, but he also had a vision; a vision over time that would provide investment opportunities for himself and his partners and long-term growth,” Ulfelder said.

Mitre Corporation made its way to Tysons in the 1960s, according to Ulfelder.

“You see what presence Mitre has today,” he said. “They started out with a 10,000-square-foot building in the mid ’60s in Westgate. It was their first building outside of Bedford, Mass.”

Companies ebbed and flowed with the economy, but Tysons continued to grow.

The Gannett Company moved from Arlington into Tysons in the ’90s by purchasing property in Westgate, Ulfelder said. Capital One Financial would later purchase 28 acres from the West Group to build its Northern Virginia corporate campus in 2000.

The bank is now redeveloping its more than 5.2 million-square-foot site in Tysons to include its corporate headquarters, publicly-accessible parks and open space, a performing arts venue, and retail space.

“Jerry — early on — saw the evolution,” Ulfelder said. “Jerry stuck with his vision, even when we went through various market changes and ups and downs,” he added.

The ‘HENS’

The years 1990 and 1991 were tough for commercial real estate, Ulfelder said, having started working for the West Group after law school in 1989, a year after his uncle died.

“We went through some changes, but Jerry continued to have strong confidence in the future of Tysons while he was watching others kind of sort of fall by the wayside and stuck with it,” he said.

Ulfelder received an education in business by watching his uncle’s business partners at work.

“What I learned was, if there was an issue that was to be decided … Jerry, Tom and Chuck would have known exactly what the other one thought,” he said. “In other words, they had worked together so well and so closely that they had a built-in sense of each other’s positions, and they helped support each other; and they all represented different facets of the decision-making process.”

The four were referred to as the HENS:

H: Halpin was a World War II veteran who served on a Navy construction battalion and possessed a background in land acquisition;

E: Ewing possessed an engineering and construction background;

N: Nicholson possessed a finance background; and

S: Seeley possessed strong roots in the community and a banking background.

“It was an education for me to watch Jerry as a negotiator,” Ulfelder said. “If things were starting to get sticky, he would blame it on the lawyers,” he added.

Ulfelder also spoke of Halpin’s strong community involvement. In his lifetime, he served as a trustee or board member of the American Horticultural Society; National Fish and Wildlife Foundation; Frontier Foundation; West Lynch Foundation; International Together Foundation; American Museum of Immigration; National Parks and Recreation Association; Virginia Museum of Science; Wolf Trap Foundation; Boarder Baby Project Gala; Medical Care for Children Partnership; and Northern Virginia Community College Awards Dinners.

Halpin also supported local groups like the McLean Orchestra and the McLean Project for the Arts, according to Ulfelder.

“Jerry encouraged his employees to be involved in different community organizations, both civic and nonprofit — whatever was of particular interest to them,” Ulfelder said.

Tysons Still Redeveloping

Halpin’s interest in farm land nestled in between Vienna and McLean was an investment that certainly paid off.

In 2010, at age 87, Halpin sold the West Group’s entire Tysons portfolio. At his death in January at the age 94, Ulfelder said Halpin’s vision is still expanding.

When Amazon announced that it was looking for a second headquarters earlier in the month, Ulfelder said he was certain the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority would ensure that the Seattle-based electronic commerce and cloud computing company would “take a hard look at landing” in Tysons.

“People have always spoken about McLean as a suburb of Washington, but maybe now it’s more of a suburb of Tysons,” he said.