The Herndon Town Council voted 6-0 on October 27 to apply for Exploring Main Street status, the entry level of the Virginia Main Street program run by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. If the state accepts the application, Herndon would become the only active Main Street community in Fairfax County, according to town staff.
Main Street is a model for managing a downtown commercial district through a nonprofit led by a board of local stakeholders: business owners, property owners, residents and community leaders. Herndon does not have that nonprofit yet. Council approved the application and nothing else: no town money, no new organization and no commitment to move up to the program’s higher tiers.
The town’s plan, laid out at an October 6 work session, is to recruit a volunteer board, help it form a nonprofit, and have that group lead promotion, business support and events downtown. The town would keep its responsibility for public policy, infrastructure, services and public investment.
Council approved the application 6-0 as a consent item
The application came to Council as Resolution 26-G-58 on the consent agenda, the list of routine items Council approves in a single vote. Vice Mayor Clark Hedrick moved it and Councilmember Alex Reyes seconded it. Mayor Keven LeBlanc, Hedrick, Reyes and Councilmembers Cesar del Aguila, Kelvin Garcia and Michael T. Lloyd voted yes. Councilmember Naila Alam was absent.
Council authorized the town manager, or a designee, to submit the application. The resolution says Council’s approval “does not establish a local Main Street organization, appropriate Town funds for its establishment or operation, or commit the Town to pursuing a higher level of Main Street designation.”
Collin Okoniewski, the town’s economic development manager and now its acting deputy town manager, told Council on October 6 that the state turns these applications around in a couple of days. “It’s probably one of the simplest applications you’ll see,” he said.
Virginia Main Street works on four areas: business, design, promotion and organization
Virginia Main Street is the state coordinating program for Main Street America, a national network of downtown programs. Main Street organizations divide their work into four areas, which the program calls points:
- Economic vitality: supporting the businesses already downtown and recruiting new ones.
- Design: storefronts, facade improvements, wayfinding signs, streetscapes and public spaces.
- Promotion: marketing, events and the downtown’s identity.
- Organization: bringing businesses, property owners, residents and the town together under one work plan.
Virginia Main Street’s 2025 annual report counts $41.7 million in private investment, 294 businesses created or expanded, and 1,215 jobs created or retained statewide that year.
Exploring is the entry tier, and Herndon can stay there indefinitely
Virginia Main Street has three tiers, according to its 2026 program guidelines:
- Exploring Main Street, open to pedestrian-oriented commercial districts interested in the model. The state does not rank Exploring applications against each other, and each one needs a resolution of support from the local government.
- Mobilizing Main Street, a competitive two-year program that prepares a local organization for full designation. Applicants need a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or a steering committee with a chair and at least five stakeholder members.
- Advancing Virginia Main Street, the designated tier. Among other requirements, a community needs a 501(c)(3) with a paid executive director, full time in any community of more than 5,000 people, completion of the Mobilizing program, and a written financial commitment from its local government covering the program’s first three years.
Exploring communities get technical help from state staff, access to Virginia Main Street trainings, and eligibility for the state’s Community Vitality Grants. Those grants top out at $15,000 per community, and the applicant puts up $1 for every $3 it requests. The most recent round closed May 1, 2026. In return, an Exploring community attends at least one state training or technical assistance session a year and files a progress update each January.
A councilmember asked on October 6 whether joining would commit a future Council to spending money. Staff answered that the town could remain at the Exploring tier as long as it wanted.
A volunteer nonprofit board, not the town, would lead the program
Under the Main Street model, local government and elected officials stay off the organization’s board, Okoniewski said. He described a board of downtown business owners and community leaders, recruited with the town’s help, whose first job would be to apply for nonprofit status. The town and the nonprofit would sign a memorandum of understanding setting out reporting and responsibilities. Until the nonprofit exists, the town’s economic development office would file the program’s reporting, which staff described as basic figures on businesses and engagement. Okoniewski said the organization should become largely self-funded over time through fundraising, sponsorships and grants.
Another staff member told Council the nonprofit would need town money to start. “There has to be some seed money,” the staff member said, adding that the town would reduce its investment over time as the group became self-sufficient. Staff said the town has talked internally about asking Fairfax County for support and expects to raise it during the fiscal 2028 budget. Any town funding would come back to Council as a separate vote.
A councilmember asked about a downtown business group that formed under one property owner, and staff said that group has endorsed the plan and has been invited to stay involved. Another councilmember asked staff to reach out to every downtown business, including ones that have felt left out in the past, and suggested family events such as ice cream socials, food trucks and movie nights. Staff said it intends to include parts of the community that are harder to reach as it thinks about board members.
Staff sketched a district around Elden, Center and Pine streets
A Main Street program covers one defined commercial district, and Okoniewski said the state asks that it leave out residential areas. The town has not published a boundary. Okoniewski described his starting point as the tight commercial core: Center Street and Pine Street, likely stopping at Monroe Street, plus the businesses along Elden Street out to Aslin Beer Company. He also named a few commercial properties beside the Washington and Old Dominion Trail as possible additions that would tie the district to the trail.
He walked the area with Virginia Main Street’s northern region representative, who told him the downtown’s commercial core would very likely qualify even without a single main thoroughfare. The nonprofit could expand the district later.
The district would not cover the Herndon Metro station area. Staff described the Metro area as a separate question, possibly suited to a business improvement district, an arrangement in which property owners pay an added assessment to fund services such as cleaning and marketing inside a defined area.
Staff says Herndon would be Fairfax County’s only active Main Street community
Herndon is one of three towns in Fairfax County, along with Vienna and Clifton. Okoniewski told Council that Herndon would be the county’s only active Main Street community.
In Loudoun County, Leesburg’s downtown nonprofit, the Leesburg Movement, joined the state’s 2025-2026 Mobilizing Main Street cohort. Manassas, which Okoniewski cited as a long-standing example, is a designated Virginia Main Street community.
Mayor LeBlanc said he asked about Main Street about three years ago and was told at the time that the program was not a good fit for Herndon. Okoniewski said the state has had trouble fitting the model to the more suburban towns of Northern Virginia, and that unsettled plans for the Metro station area may also have held the town back.
The downtown’s center block is still tied up in the Comstock appeal
Herndon is applying while the five acres at Elden and Center streets remain unbuilt. A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge ruled for Comstock in September, leaving the deed in Comstock’s name, and the town filed a notice of appeal on October 7. The block is still mostly surface parking.
The Downtown Early Action Plan committee, part of the Herndon 2050 comprehensive plan rewrite, heard the Main Street idea in June before staff brought it to Council. The early action plan sets land use and development policy for downtown. A Main Street nonprofit would lead day-to-day promotion, business support and events.
Watch for the state’s acceptance, the board and a first budget request
- State acceptance. Staff expected a turnaround of a couple of days once the application went in.
- The board. The town will recruit volunteer board members from downtown businesses and the community, and the board will then apply for nonprofit status.
- The district map. The final boundary will build out from the commercial core along Elden, Center and Pine streets.
- Money. Staff expects to ask Council for seed money for the nonprofit and to raise county support during the fiscal 2028 budget, which Council takes up next spring.
For homeowners in the streets around downtown, the change would be a new organization working to fill storefronts and bring people downtown. A Main Street nonprofit has no zoning power, so the program does not change what can be built. If you own near downtown Herndon or are weighing a purchase within walking distance of Elden Street, reach out. We sell homes across Herndon and Reston and follow the town’s downtown decisions closely.
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