Groundbreaking at Future Kingstowne Wegmans Site

Fairfax County officials and developers involved in the construction of Wegmans at Hilltop Village Center gathered Monday to break ground on the site.

Speakers at the ceremony — three years after the site's zoning was changed in 2009 — shared a common feeling: Finally!

"To me, it feels like it was rezoned in 1999," said Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay (D). McKay said, along with the redevelopment of Springfield Mall, the Wegmans construction is the issue his constituents ask him about most.

Wegmans construction has faced several delays, including that was rejected last year by the Virginia Supreme Court. Along with Wegmans, the Hilltop Village Center complex, located near the intersection of Beulah and Telegraph Road, will have an office building and additional retail space.

The land that will become Hilltop Village Center has been in the Gailliot family since 1917 and was previously used as a chicken farm and a gravel quarry. Michael C. Gailliot, the president of Hilltop Village LLC, praised the plans his grandfather made in the 1970's to develop a new use for the site.

"Today we are here to celebrate and see all this construction going on around us," Gailliot said. A representative from Weingarten Realty Investors, the Houston, Texas-based firm that for $13.6 million, was also at the groundbreaking.

The supermarket is not expected to open until the spring of 2014, according to Paul Gilbert, Wegmans' real estate director.

"I wish it was 7 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday in 2014," he said. 

Mount Vernon District Supervisor Gerry Hyland (D) also spoke, recalling that the first time he walked into a Wegmans, it was "like a paradise."

"Everybody wants to know when the Wegmans is coming," Hyland said. "Now I can finally say, 'It's coming."