LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
LoudounNow
[ Vol. 4, No. 17 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
Walsh wines find a home
32
[ March 14, 2019 ]
Villages Team Up to Tackle Comp Plan BY PATRICK SZABO
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
Residents of Goose Creek Bend near Leesburg—next to undeveloped farmland—say they’d prefer data centers to more houses.
Planning Commission Wrapping Up Work On Housing-Focused Comprehensive Plan BY RENSS GREENE After years of work, a project that has simmered in the background of almost all of this Board of Supervisors’ term and will define Loudoun’s future for decades is almost ready to enter the final round of review. The Planning Commission has spent months laboring over Loudoun 2040, more than 700 pages of policy to replace the county’s nearly 20-year-old Revised General Plan. When that comprehensive plan was written in 2001, there were around 190,000 people in Loudoun County. Today, there are more than 400,000. And as that growth continues, and studies project demands for tens of thousands more homes in an already-expensive Loudoun housing market, people working on the plan say it is focused on
housing and growth—although there remains disagreement about how to handle both. “I see a plan about growth, and I think that’s a lot of housing, but also a lot of data center growth,” said Gem Bingol, the Piedmont Environmental Council’s representative in Loudoun and Clarke counties. She also served on the stakeholder steering committee that wrote the first draft of the plan, which the Planning Commission has edited further. She said the plan continues a pattern of growth and sprawl. “You need additional housing to support more economic growth,” said Planning Commissioner Jeff Salmon (Dulles). “Without more houses, you’re not going to get the economic growth that you need, and we just signed up for Metro. Metro assumes that we’re going to have economic growth, it’s a big help
to economic growth, but you can’t do everything in a vacuum. It’s got to be a balance.” Indeed, the county is counting on development and growth in the Metro area to pay for Loudoun’s obligations to Metrorail. But one of the biggest areas of change, the county’s new urban area around its future Metrorail stops, is already being planned, in large part, outside of the comprehensive plan process. Already under consideration by the Board of Supervisors is the rezoning application for Silver District West, a proposal by Detroit-based Soave Enterprises, the developer of Brambleton. The project would cover 158 acres along most of the south side of the Dulles Greenway between the Ashburn and Loudoun Gateway Metro stations. Representing a COMPREHENSIVE PLAN >> 46
Loudoun’s nearly 30 unincorporatedvillages might not have formal municipal governments or the power to make decisions on land use, but six of them have banded together to create a united front with an amplified voice. The villages of Aldie, Bluemont, Lincoln, Taylorstown, Unison and Waterford recently formed the Loudoun Historic Village Alliance to take a unified stand on Envision Loudoun—the county’s rewrite process of the 2040 Comprehensive Plan that includes draft language allowing for increased development in the county’s rural areas. The alliance is specifically focused on addressing concerns of increased traffic, encroaching development, zoning enforcement, utility system functionality, proposed construction of public buildings and pressure from the county to close smaller schools. The six signing members of the alliance are the Aldie Heritage Association, the Bluemont Citizens Association, the Lincoln Preservation Foundation, the Taylorstown Community Association, the Unison Preservation Foundation and the Waterford Foundation—all tax-exempt nonprofits. The villages of Philomont and Lucketts also plan to join the alliance, with their representatives having already attended a few meetings. According to Peter Weeks, the alliance’s vice chairman and the president of the Bluemont Citizens Association, the idea to form a multi-village group arose about six months ago, when he and other residents felt the urgency to get more involved as the Planning Commission was busy drafting and holding public input sessions on Loudoun 2040. He said that urgency translated into the formation of the alliance about a month ago. “It’s important that we have one unifying voice for each of these villages,” he said. “We feel that together we can accomplish a lot more.” So far, the alliance has met three times, with another meeting planned for this LOUDOUN VILLAGES >> 37
Give your child a competitive advantage. New Dulles Campus!
Admissions Information Session
Saturday, March 16 ˀ at 10:00am
Near the intersection Lower School Middle School High School of Routes 28 & 606 703 759 5100 www.FairfaxChristianSchool.com
ECRWSS Postal Customer
Permit #1401 Southern MD
PAID
U.S. Postage PRESRT STD