Tysons Casino Bill Killed For 2025 VA Legislative Session

RICHMOND, VA — For the third straight legislative session, efforts to win passage of a bill that would start the process of building a casino in Fairfax County have failed.

Members of the Commerce, Agriculture & Natural Resources Subcommittee in the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously late Wednesday to pass by Senate Bill 982, so it will not proceed in the current legislative session, Del. David Bulova (D-Fairfax) told Patch.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon), the bill's chief patron, disagreed: "The bill can be brought back and passed through Tuesday."

Comstock Holding Companies, a Reston-based developer, has spent more than $1.5 million since 2023 in a bid to pass legislation allowing a casino to be built on Metro's Silver Line outside the Capital Beltway in Fairfax County.

The project would include a 4 million-square-foot entertainment district in Tysons that would feature a high-end hotel with gaming floor, convention center, concert venue, restaurants, retail, and workforce housing. In addition, 200,000 square feet of the district would be dedicated to a casino.

Related: 3rd Fairfax Supervisor States Opposition To Tysons Casino Bill

Sen. Jennifer Boysko, who spoke in opposition to the casino bill on Wednesday, issued a statement after the subcommittee vote was taken:

"I was pleased that the House Appropriations Committee took the action to kill the casino proposal. All along it was an unvetted project. There was absolutely no guarantee that labor protections would happen. There was not a legitimate independent study that provided analysis. And finally, forcing one specific location for a major land use with zero buy-in from the community doomed the project from the start.

"Tysons and the Silver Line corridor have, I would argue, the most economically robust business climate in the Commonwealth and were carefully planned with community input," Boysko said. "A casino is not an appropriate land use there. My constituents have been contacting me to say how grateful they are that the bill has died."

Paula Martino, president of the Tysons Stakeholders Alliance, released the following statement:

“The voice of the people was finally heard today. Thank you to the Members of the Senate who voted no and to the House of Delegates for listening to the thousands of Fairfax County residents who expressed their opposition to the Tysons casino legislation. If this bill had passed, it would have not only wreaked havoc on our county and region, but it would have set a bad precedent in circumventing local authority and the will of the local community.”

Lynne Mulston, chair of the No Fairfax Casino Coalition, released this statement: "This bill was not requested by the local government, unlike the five other casinos that were authorized. This bill is the product of a local developer who stands to benefit from the carefully crafted language of the bill that targets his holdings and possibly one other nearby site. Further, the idea of a casino has been rejected by thousands of residents of the county, who believe that a casino does not comport with the long term plans for Tysons.”

Casino Bill's Path Through Legislature

After the Virginia Senate approved SB 982 on Feb. 4 on a 24 to 16 vote, the bill was referred on Friday to the General Laws Committee. However, Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) requested that the bill be rereferred to the House Appropriations Committee.

On Wednesday, the appropriations committee referred it to the Agriculture & Natural Resources Subcommittee. Once the vote was taken, Bulova announced that this was the final time the subcommittee would meet this session.

During the 2023 legislative session, Sen. Dave Marsden (D-Burke) and Del. Wren Williams (R-Stuart) introduced nearly identical bills in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly seeking to give the board of supervisors the authority to put a casino referendum on a future ballot. The bills were quickly withdrawn following public backlash against the legislation.

Marsden reintroduced the referendum legislation as Senate Bill 675 in January 2024, but the Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriations voted to hold it over to the 2025 session. The final version bill included language which narrowed the location of the proposed casino to Tysons.

In January 2025, Surovell introduced SB982, shepherding it through the Gaming Subcommittee and the General Laws & Technology and Appropriations Committees. Sens. Lamont Bagby (D-Richmond), Stella Pekarsky (D-Centreville) and Todd Pillion (R-Abington) served as the bill sponsors.

“We need this kind of project in Fairfax County to bring tourists, come and spend their money in our state, to support our Metro and support our economy,” Surovell told the subcommittee. “For the state in authorizing this, there's $2.3 billion per decade of money for school construction, a lot more of that for the general fund."

Read all of Patch's reporting on the plan to build a casino on Metro's Silver Line in Fairfax County at Silver Line Casino.