| Fairfax's
answer to sprawl: taller, denser developments around
Metro stations
by Brett Lieberman
Virginia Business
May 2005
Stanley Settle Jr. pounds his
fist in frustration on an oversized aerial photo
spread across a table
in his Fairfax office. Though he should be one of the
happiest builders in Northern Virginia, the blunt-spoken
Settle is miffed about the way things are going with
the region’s largest redevelopment in an area
adjoining the Vienna Metro station.
“If you really wanted to do smart growth, and
you look at Nutley and you look at [Route] 29 and you
look at Blake Lane, what do you see?” asks Settle,
who handles acquisitions in Northern Virginia for Michigan-based
Pulte Homes. “Density is four [homes] to an acre
over here. Four-to-an-acre!” he says, feigning
disbelief. “That’s not smart.”
Settle is the tough-talking
man behind Pulte’s
$1 billion gambit that proponents and critics alike
agree could be the model of future development in space-starved,
gridlocked Fairfax County. As spending on national
defense and homeland security continues to create jobs
in Northern Virginia, residential and commercial construction
is booming. However, the area is running out of developable
land, and traffic congestion is getting worse. One
solution being pushed by Pulte and other builders is
denser developments near Metro stations. Or as Fairfax
Chamber of Commerce CEO William D. Lecos puts it, “We
can’t sprawl, so we have to go tall…” The
approach, say proponents, makes better use of the land
around Metro stations and creates incentives for people
to use mass transit, taking cars off the area’s
crowded streets.
Pulte bought 69 single-family
homes in the wooded but aging 56-acre Fairlee neighborhood
near the last
stop on the Metro’s Orange Line. The company’s
MetroWest project would replace the homes with a massive
mixed-use development, which would include up to 2,250
condos and townhouses in 12-story residential buildings,
300,000 square feet of office space and at least 100,000
square feet of retail space. The project could support
a small city of 5,000 residents and office workers
who would have easy access to public transportation.
Although Pulte has succeeded where other developers
have failed — its mixed-use project received
unanimous approval from the Fairfax Board of Supervisors — Settle
remains frustrated by the pace of change. The board
approved a comprehensive plan in December that increases
density to a minimum of 90 residential units per acre,
but still pending is a rezoning that could come this
summer, three years after Settle began the process.
Still, the county’s endorsement of higher-density
development that wiped out a neighborhood is a monumental
policy shift. Developers have torn down homes for new
developments in the past, but MetroWest is the biggest
and most visible step by local leaders to give more
than lip service to the concept of smart growth. Fairfax
is known for its suburban sprawl, traffic and hodgepodge
of development that grew out of poor planning 30 years
ago. “It’s a delicate balance in a suburban
county like Fairfax that is partly suburban, partly
urban,” says Gerry Connolly, chairman of the
Board of Supervisors. That’s one reason why Linda
Q. Smyth, the Providence District supervisor who represents
the Fairlee neighborhood, is pressing Settle to do
as much public outreach as possible to sell Pulte’s
development. To build consensus, Settle has been meeting
with 64 homeowners’ associations in the area.
While Settle claims Smyth’s measured pace is “killing
me,” she says she just wants to get it right
in an area that has developed piecemeal. Fairfax’s
failure to better plan development around its Metro
stops made the stations the focus of a community rather
than just a means of transportation. She wants to involve
the community so that Metro stations fit better into
surrounding neighborhoods. “This is the last
chance. This is the last chunk of land in that transit
station area to put those things that we’re missing
into the picture,” she says.
For years, smart growth advocates
have preached about the need for higher densities,
particularly around
the county’s six metro stations. The issue has
resurfaced as the Metro system undergoes the first
phase of a $1.5 billion expansion that would extend
it from West Falls Church to the eastern edge of Reston.
The model everyone points to, from politicians to smart
growth advocates, is Arlington County. There county
planners pressed Metro to locate its stations along
Wilson Boulevard in the Rosslyn to Ballston corridor
and then zoned for population densities as high as
90 residential units per acre along the route. While
Arlington used the Metro to drive development in a
narrow corridor, Fairfax did little to use its rail
stations as urban hubs.
Connolly and other county
leaders dispute suggestions that they have avoided
attempts to solve problems caused
by the Fairfax’s unbridled growth. They cite
the rezoning of Tysons Corner, Merrifield and the Dulles
Corridor around the Huntington Metro and Springfield
during the last decade. But with more growth staring
them in the face, county leaders are embracing higher
densities around Metro stations as key to the county’s
future. In the next 20 years, Fairfax expects to gain
58,000 households as the Washington region adds 2 million
residents and 1.6 million jobs. Fairfax’s current
population is already more than 1 million.
The land-use issue assumes more urgency as the supply
of open space for development dwindles. There also
are limits on how much in-fill development can solve
problems.
Perhaps most important is the need to add roads and to persuade residents to
use mass transit. “We’re at that stage where we’re going
back and looking at the stations that are here today and making better use
of them,” Lecos says.
That’s why developers, elected officials, community
leaders and slow-growth groups are watching the MetroWest
development closely. Its success could set a precedent,
especially for redeveloping an older neighborhood.
Already Centex has a proposal to redevelop a neighboring
tract, and Pulte and other developers are putting together
plans for higher density projects around the planned
rail extension to Dulles. “We want people to
get behind this so it can happen in other places in
other Metro locations in the county,” says Jon
Lindgren, Pulte’s acquisitions manager.
Not everyone is convinced
this is the way to go. MetroWest’s neighbors question the number of
residential units Settle says is needed to achieve
a critical mass to support the retail and office parts
of the development, which will be built by Clark Realty
of Fairfax. “It’s unbridled growth that’s
just based on what the developer wants,” warns
William S. Elliott of Fairfax Citizens for Responsible
Growth. “If the mixed use fails, what we will
have is a massive high-rise project where people will
have to get into their cars to go on errands.”
That realization has been
driving many recent mixed-use projects around the
county. They rely on higher densities
and promote the “live, work, play” motto
that Arlington embraced long ago. “If you can
do one of these things in a neighborhood, where you
can combine housing, retail and offices, then you cut
the need to take a car trip,” says Jim Todd,
president of The Peterson Cos. It developed Fairfax
Corner, a mixed-use “lifestyle” development
of high-end stores, restaurants and a movie theater
adjacent to the county government center. The complex
has been popular since the first stores opened in August
2003.
Smaller pockets of development are occurring at other
Metro stations as well. LCOR Corp. and Marriott Hotels,
for example, are building condos and a hotel across
from the Dunn Loring Metro in Merrifield. Nearby, the
Merrifield Town Center is planned in an area known
more for Taco Bells, auto repair shops and equipment
rental businesses. The Peterson Cos., which is building
the 400-acre National Harbor project in Prince Georges
County, Md., combined 865,000 square feet of retail,
office and residential in the $80 million Fairfax Corner
project.
Of course, the big gorilla
lurking in everyone’s
mind is Tysons Corner. That 1,700-acre area has been
transformed from pastoral farmlands to the economic
engine of Fairfax County and Northern Virginia. It
could double in size with the extension of the Metro
from West Falls Church. (See
story)
With four new Metro stations
planned during the first expansion phase, Fairfax
leaders say now is the time
to make several important decisions. Among them: deciding
on a vision for the area, regriding streets that are
as wide as rivers to make them pedestrian friendly,
adding street-level retail and restaurants, and creating
neighborhoods around these hubs. “If we can define
what we’d like the place to look like, then we
can discuss how to do it,” Lecos says.
If anything, disputes over
the county’s future
growth are likely to intensify. The county’s
affluence, excellent schools, quality of life and proximity
to the nation’s capital will continue to make
it an appealing draw for new jobs and residents. “The
growth is coming here, so we’re going to have
to deal with it,” Todd says. “Our least
likely solution is to say don’t build anything.
I don’t think there’s any way we can stop
it.”
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