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It's
the Location, Stupid
The
Smart Growth and New Urbanism movements share
similar critiques of suburban sprawl, but they
don't always agree on the solutions.
By
Bob Burke
When
it comes to Smart Growth, Loudoun County doesn’t
get much praise. As far as critics are concerned
it’s a lost cause, a soulless place overrun by
auto-dependent subdivisions and strip malls.
So
why, then, did a coalition of smart-growth
supporters give an award to a new proposed
development there? In November the Washington
Smart Growth Alliance recognized the One Loudoun
development, planned on what is now a sod farm
next to crowded Route 7, as a “Smart Growth
Project” for its mixed-use design and
environmental sensitivity.
The
award was a plum for Bill May, vice president of
the McLean-based Miller and Smith, the project’s
developer. He hopes it will help the project
approval from the county later this year. “If
Smart Growth is really what Loudoun County wants,
then they need to take a long hard look at this
project because this is it,” he says.
But
some critics see One Loudoun as a good project
that might be in the wrong place. Just because a
development follows New Urbanist tenets - such as
putting offices and retail stores close to
housing, or laying out grid-pattern streets -
doesn’t mean it can go anywhere. “The biggest
debate we tend to have with New Urbanists is
location, location, location,” says Stewart
Schwartz, director of the Coalition for Smarter
Growth.
That
is a key obstacle for Smart Growth. Even if the
private sector starts producing higher density
development, much of the benefit to traffic can be
lost if there is no link between the projects and
the transportation network. The problem that One
Loudoun faces is that the county “has no
coherent vision for how eastern Loudoun should
function,” Schwartz says. “So, you’re
getting a number of higher density individual
proposals, some that are truly mixed-use like this
one, but not necessarily interrelated.”
Even
so, One Loudoun has won recognition from the
alliance, which includes Schwartz’s coalition,
the Urban Land Institute’s Washington chapter,
the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Greater
Washington Board of Trade. The project has an
excellent plan, says John Bailey, the alliance’s
director. It creates new recreation space,
protects the local environment and will be
well-connected with the road network around it.
Bailey
points out that One Loudoun’s mix of housing and
commercial uses will let residents and workers
walk instead of drive, which is a step in the
right direction. “I don’t think we’re going
to cure traffic congestion. We just have to make
sure we’re building places where you don’t
have to drive everywhere to do everything.” The
alliance generally prefers projects closer to
transit systems or to the urban core in and around
Washington. Loudoun does have new transit-oriented
projects, such as the planned Loudoun Station next to
a proposed Metrorail station. “It is very tough
to get a project like One Loudoun through” the
judging process, Bailey says.
One
Loudoun would have 1,840 residential units,
590,000 square feet of retail space and nearly 3
million square feet of office space. May says a
traffic study shows the project will produce 12
percent fewer daily trips than the property’s
current office and industrial zoning. The project
is located at the corner of Route 7 and the new
Loudoun County Parkway, where another developer is
proposing to build a narrower single-point
intersection instead of the traditional
cloverleaf. That will allow other higher density,
mixed-use development, May says. “We think
we’ve got an appropriate design that’s going
to create something everybody can be proud of.”
The
affinity between New Urbanism and Smart Growth
becomes even more strained when new developments
pop up out in the open countryside. About a dozen
miles outside of Fredericksburg on what is now
farmland and woods, developer John Clark is close
to breaking ground on the long-planned Haymount
project on the Rappahannock River. Built in a
traditional town style, Haymount includes 4,000
housing units and 750,000 square feet of retail
and commercial space.
Clark is determined to make
Haymount’s retail economy succeed. He has
identified 115 of what he calls “classic
businesses in a small town” – such as banks,
grocery stores, hardware stores – and will
recruit them when the project has enough
residents. He says employers have expressed
interest in locating there too, once the project
is underway. “We’re looking at a biological
evolution,” he says. “It’s about how you let
those communities reinforce each other.”
The
retail and employment factors have to succeed for
the project to reduce the traffic impact, says
Maureen McAvey, an urban development specialist
with the Washington office of the Urban Land
Institute. About a quarter of vehicle trips are
commuting to and from work, she says. The rest are
errands, so letting people combine those trips is
critical. “People really will park and do two or
three types of things and then get back in their
car,” she says.
However,
Schwartz of the coalition says Haymount’s remote
location makes getting the right mix of retail and
housing mix nearly impossible. The location is
beautiful land but it’s set a few miles off of a
two-lane road about a dozen miles from Fredericks-
burg, the closest urban area. “It’s not going
to be self-sustaining,” Schwartz says. “In the
end [it] will still generate the same number of
peak-hour auto trips on roads that can’t handle
it, and you will still have a substantial number
of commuters trying to head north to jobs in
Washington.”
Clark
says Haymount will work just as well as a project
closer to Fredericksburg because he plans shuttle
buses from the project to the Virginia Railway
Express stop in the city. “My folks aren’t
walking any further, they’re just getting on the
shuttle bus. What’s the difference?”
A
better example of what Smart Growth proponents
favor is nearby Leeland Station, a 2,000-unit
mixed-use development planned around a stop of the
VRE in Stafford County which is seeking county
approval this year. Washington-bound commuters can
hop a train to work and back.
Another
option is to redevelop older inner suburbs with
New Urbanist projects, Schwartz says. “We’d
like to see much more attention from New Urbanists
to those communities. I think people forget how
much land we have chewed up already, that is just
sitting in a defunct strip mall and parking
lots.”
Bacon's
Rebellion News Service
January
16, 2006
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