Coalition for Smarter Growth Position Paper
One Loudoun Center

County/Citizen Vision Plan for Eastern Loudoun Needed

November 13, 2006

Much uncertainty surrounds the One Loudoun Center project and whether local citizens and elected officials should support the project. This memo is an attempt to clarify the record and provide a context for evaluating this project.

The core issue for Loudoun County involving this and other projects in eastern Loudoun is the need to first develop the four Community Plans called for in the Comprehensive Plan. Eastern Loudoun faces significant traffic problems, very poor interconnections between developments, and multiple developers proposing large centers of development in the absence of a county consensus on where those centers should be and how many are needed or viable. With the divisive issue of the Transition Zone CPAMs off the table, there is an excellent opportunity to begin re-envisioning the design of eastern Loudoun using extensive citizen involvement and modern visualization and design tools. Certainly, creating mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly centers and communities will be one of the outcomes of such a process. But, for now, in the absence of a coordinated vision and the specific community plans for eastern Loudoun, it is not possible to fairly evaluate specific developer rezoning requests of this scale and impact.

Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Smart Growth Alliance (Recognition Jury)

The One Loudoun Center project was endorsed by the 12-person Smart Growth Alliance Recognition Jury [1] which consists of architects, developers, developer attorneys, affordable housing experts, government planners and environmentalists including one seat held by the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

It is important to note that the jury reviews and endorses projects, not the quality of the surrounding comprehensive plan. In certain cases, the Coalition for Smarter Growth must independently consider factors that might not be before the SGA Jury. Before an individual developer seeks to use the Coalition’s name rather than the Smart Growth Alliance on behalf of their project, we should be consulted and our approval granted. More often than not we take a strong organizational stance in support of a project in addition to the separate endorsement and letter of support of the Smart Growth Alliance, however we have not done so for One Loudoun Center. The rest of this memo will explain why.

Project versus Context

The SGA Recognition Jury endorsement stems from the project’s credible effort to improve mixed-use development and design in a suburban context. It mixes office, retail, residential and a school on an interconnected street network in a generally pedestrian-friendly format. They used an excellent architecture firm, Torti-Gallas Partners, to develop the design. However there is a larger planning context and set of problems that must be addressed in eastern Loudoun before deciding whether to approve or disapprove the project.

First, it is impossible to evaluate this project in a vacuum, given the tens of thousands of additional houses in the pipeline and the combined effect on Loudoun’s crowded roadways.

Second, the long debate over efforts to amend the Comprehensive Plan to add tens of thousands of additional houses to eastern Loudoun and the rural areas has diverted staff time needed for creating the detailed set of area plans promised in the 2001 Revised Comprehensive Plan – plans essential for fixing the land use and transportation design problems of eastern Loudoun.

The Missing Community Plans for Eastern Loudoun

The 2001 Comprehensive Plan stipulates that “All future development applications in the [Suburban] policy area will be reviewed in the context of the four large communities: Ashburn, Dulles, Potomac and Sterling.” (p. 6-2). Policy #4 states that “The County will develop four Community Plans that will provide for the development of the Suburban Policy Area.” (p. 6-7) Without first developing these plans, there is a great risk that eastern Loudoun will become a hodgepodge of disconnected projects, lacking the interconnected local street network and bicycle and pedestrian accessibility needed to reduce traffic.

Specific Context-Related Problems

1. Significant existing traffic problems and large number of houses in the pipeline create significant concerns that One Loudoun Center’s additional development cannot be supported by nearby major arterials and highways.
2. The addition of residential development to the One Loudoun Center project to provide a mix of uses makes sense, but only by shifting residential units from other nearby areas. This approach has not been offered by the developer or the county but would be possible under recently passed state Transfer of Development Rights legislation or the existing Density Transfer Policies of Loudoun County.
3. Any analysis of eastern Loudoun development patterns shows an area with high quality individual residential neighborhoods but also a severely inadequate local road network lacking in the many street interconnections between neighborhoods and centers that communities need.
4. One Loudoun Center is separated from other major area developments on the north side of Route 7 by the width of the right-of-way. Proposals to turn Route 7 into a highway with large interchanges will frustrate transit, pedestrian and bicycle circulation and access between the two sides of the highway. A different design approach is needed that still moves traffic easily but without being a huge barrier and allows for pedestrian/bicycle movements.
5. One of the great challenges is that Loudoun County has zoned far more land than they need for commercial development. This means that individual landowners and developers can pick and choose where to plant a building. Supplying so much land results in industrial warehouses and many commercial office buildings that end-up scattered and separated from each other. The result is worse commuter traffic, 100% of employees driving to work, and having to get in cars for long trips to go to lunch or run errands.
6. While it is positive that developers are proposing mixed-use centers in lieu of more scattered office parks, there is no clear analysis of how many major centers of development Eastern Loudoun can support or where they should be located. Among the many “centers” are Landsdowne, One Loudoun Center, Moorefield Station, Loudoun Station, Dulles “Town Center,” and proposals for Route 28/Dulles Toll Road, Arcola, and Dulles South (Greenvest et al), among others. [2] Each major developer seems intent on capturing a large share of office and retail by drawing a regional market of customers driving from all directions. The One Loudoun Center business plan could also be implemented, if the market exists, in a variety of business centers already begun, including Moorefield Station and Loudoun Station, both with transit zoning, and University Center across Route 7 from One Loudoun.
7. There is not enough of a market for this many major centers, with the result that only a couple will be built and the others are likely to build-out mainly as residential developments. In effect, the conceptually desirable mixed-use zoning ordinances would add to the residential inventory, even as barely 50% of the Ashburn and Dulles Communities are built, with approximately 29,000 houses already zoned but unbuilt in these areas.

Conclusion

We hope that Loudoun County will engage the public in developing the four Community Plans for eastern Loudoun as promised in the 2001 Comprehensive Plan. These plans would allow for all to contribute to the development of a coherent design for eastern Loudoun, to define where and how many mixed-use centers should be approved, to provide for shifting housing into mixed-use communities, to develop a better and more interconnected street network, and to ensure that that a real sense of place and form can be created for each of Loudoun’s four communities. The Coalition for Smarter Growth would be willing to support and participate in such efforts, which would enable county officials to better evaluate locations and designs for mixed-use centers similar to One Loudoun Center.

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[1] The Smart Growth Alliance consists of the Urban Land Institute, Greater Washington Board of Trade, Metropolitan Builders Council, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Enterprise Community Partners. Enterprise Community Partners (formerly the Enterprise Foundation), which supports investment in affordable housing, joined the SGA after the jury review of One Loudoun Center.

[2] Note: That the list of centers does not imply endorsement of any particular center. Too few are designed to achieve the true pedestrian-friendly designs of a real town.