|
Curse
of the "D" Word
Developer
Ted Smart wants to build a mixed-use community in
Stafford County around a VRE rail station. But
many residents, fearing density, are putting up
resistance.
by
Robert L. Burke
Give
Ted Smart some credit. What this Maryland
developer wants to bring to Stafford County is something it surely needs – namely, a better way
to grow than the scattered
subdivision-and-strip-mall concoction that is
stretching its budget and crowding its roads.
Smart
wants to create a high-density, mixed-use
community next to a stop on southern branch of the
Virginia Railway Express commuter rail line. His
proposed development – called Leeland Station -
would mimic places like Old Town Alexandria or
nearby downtown Fredericksburg. Where today there
are woods and a 626-space parking lot for
commuters, there would be instead a mix of
housing, shops, restaurants, offices and walkable
public spaces.
Check
out the renderings that Smart’s firm has produced –
the community looks charming, doesn’t it?
Leeland
Station: Envisioned commercial street
There are many in
Stafford who like this approach. But there’s one
sticking point: Smart wants to expand the project
and crowd a lot more houses and people onto the
site. The current plan allows about 250 more
houses, and Smart wants to build a total of 1,673
residential units, from condos to single-family
houses.
To
some, the higher density is a deal killer no
matter how you do it. People have been moving to
Stafford at a fast clip for about two
decades: The county population rose more than 48 percent
in the 1990s and is up another 27 percent since
2000 to about 117,000 people. The strain is
showing all over, including on local road
networks. With a population projected to double
by 2030, and with scant hope of any state or local
funding for new roads, many here would like to hit
the brakes on any new projects.
“Any
increase in density [at Leeland Station] has to be
offset by a decrease in density somewhere else in
the county,” says Patricia Kurpiel, a local
environmentalist who is active in countywide
issues.
Smart
disagrees. “It makes absolutely no sense to not
have more density around a VRE station.” It’s
unavoidable that more people are going to move to
Stafford, he says, so what choice does the county
have except to create communities that don’t
depend entirely on cars? “You ask anybody about
the problems around here and it’s traffic,
traffic, traffic.”
There’s
nothing revolutionary about the transit- oriented
development that Smart wants to build. Even though
the impact locally might be not be large, projects
like this can be an effective part of a regionwide
strategy.
“Development
is never going to make traffic go away,” Smart
says. “But smarter development is going to
mitigate traffic problems. If we can put 1,673
[units] in a very livable, sustainable
development, how many people would choose to live
here instead of somewhere else in Stafford County?
Even
though Stafford needs some new strategies, it’s
not especially ready to receive them. It's in the
middle of rewriting its comprehensive plan, which
hasn’t been through a major revision since 1988.
In fact, its current zoning laws don’t even
allow the kind of project Smart proposes – he's
had to hire lawyers to write the language for an
amendment to the county ordinance.
“At
this point we’ve brought them the very best of
modern zoning,” says Daniel K. Slone, an
attorney with McGuireWoods who specializes in
land-use issues. “We’re in the mode now of
hoping they’re receptive to it and helping them
work through any questions.”
Envisioned
Leeland Station plaza:
Dense
by Stafford County standards, but Manhattan, it
ain't.
The
county has bigger questions to answer, though, and
Leeland Station is just one of many pressing
issues. Such as what to do about thousands of
by-right housing units waiting to be built, or how
to find money to expand its road network, or
protecting environmentally sensitive areas.
Kurpiel,
who is on the 12-member steering committee working
on the comprehensive plan rewrite, says there’s
support for mixed-use projects like Leeland
Station but she argues that the county can’t
afford the higher density unless it can deal with
the development already approved.
“We
haven’t as a community articulated what benefits
we’d like to see from this,” she says. Besides
its outdated comprehensive plan, the county still
needs to develop some growth-management tools,
such as a transfer of development rights program,
now permitted in limited form in Virginia. “We
need an overall plan. We’re working on it.
It’s tough.”
Leeland
Station is a touchy topic for county leaders. In
the November 2005 election, all four incumbents
seeking re-election to the Board of Supervisors
were defeated, in large part by voter frustration
over traffic and the pace of development. So,
there may be some hesitancy to discuss it
publicly.
County
supervisor George Schwartz, who represents the
district where the Leeland Station project would
be built, didn’t respond to interview requests.
Neither did Pete Fields, a supervisor who has
aggressively pushed for land-use reform in the
county. Same for Steven Pitzel, a member of the
county’s planning commission and a member of the
comprehensive plan steering committee.
The
project does have support from outside. In 2004
the Washington Smart Growth Alliance, a consortium
of environmental, business and land-use groups,
praised the project for its “compact and diverse
development within walking distance of the VRE
station” while preserving a third of the site as
open space, triple that of the current plan. In
addition, Smart is offering the county $37 million
in proffers, and plans to spend $17 million to
widen key roads near the project site. Plans also
call for encouraging bike and pedestrian access
and making room for regional bus service.
But
that’s part of the conundrum for Stafford. While
the proposed Leeland Station might in concept
mitigate traffic, in raw numbers it’s going to
put more vehicles on the road. Smart says the
project’s 120,000 square feet of commercial
space will have restaurants, child care and
services such as dry cleaning or bike repair.
“By creating the place, now it’s a place
people actually want to go, because they can do
something there besides just ride the train,” he
says.
But
it won’t have a grocery store or a gas station.
In gauging the project’s impact on local traffic
“you’ve got to put it in a context of what
else is happening in the corridor,” says Stewart
Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for
Smarter Growth. “It is fully understandable that
they’re concerned that they will not only get
the higher [density] development at the station,
but they’ll also get the by-right development
too.”
Kurpiel
says the comprehensive plan revision is behind
schedule and will last well into next year. Smart
hopes his project will inspire some ideas in the
new plan, but he doesn't want to wait for it to be
finished before he can begin. “Once we’ve made
the case for transportation, for the environment,
for the livability, for the sustainability of the
community," he says, "it only comes down
to political will,” he says.
--
December 13, 2006
|
