Elected officials try to 'get out front' of development
If the numbers are correct, Fredericksburg-area officials had better step up planning for an explosion of growth over the next 25 years.
The Washington-based Urban Land Institute estimates that Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia will have another 2 million residents and 1.6 million new jobs by 2030. And Northern Virginia will probably wind up with more than its share.
That was the headline from Reality Check, a planning seminar put on last week by ULI and the Smart Growth Alliance.
It's a daunting forecast for planners and politicians in fast-growing suburbs, who must decide where to put all those people. The trick is to channel thousands of new homes to designated areas without making traffic congestion worse and preserving open areas.
In the Fredericksburg area, scores of new developments with hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of houses are in the works, among them:
Sherwood Forest in southern Stafford County, 1,200 acres with 2,950 houses planned.
Lee's Parke in Spotsylvania County, 1,125 acres with 2,232 houses planned.
Clevenger's Village in Culpeper County, 1,754 acres with 766 houses planned.
Bob Hagan, chairman of the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors, was among half a dozen local officials who attended the conference in D.C.
He says it was an eye-opener for his county, which has the third-fastest population growth in Virginia.
"We either have to wait for it to happen, or plan for it," Hagan said.
No game
Reality Check was billed as the first regional growth conference of its kind. Some 300 planners, local elected officials, policy wonks and smart-growth advocates from 21 jurisdictions, huddled around 30 tables superimposed with a giant metro-area map.
During a three-hour exercise, participants stacked yellow, blue and white blocks representing housing, jobs and density based on their best guess of where it would occur. Hence the name, Reality Check.
Not surprisingly, most of the Lego stacks were around transportation corridors in urban areas. Most of those were clustered along Interstate 95 and U.S. 1, and in the vicinity of commuter rail stations.
"What I did learn is that it's a lot easier to put Legos on a map than it is to get jobs and people to go where you want them," Hagan said.
Ric Goss, Spotsylvania's planning director, said that the challenge is balancing housing and jobs. Spotsylvania and Stafford have long been bedroom communities of the greater Washington area. More than half the working population lives here, but commutes north to work.
More jobs are needed here and within easy commute from Fredericksburg, Goss said.
"If there's no regional benefit other than housing" for area localities, "you can expect to continue to see resistance" to adding more and more houses, apartments and town houses while other areas to the north have a disproportionate share of the jobs.
Spotsylvania gets about 85 percent of its tax revenue from residents and about 15 percent from businesses. The county would like to see that change to 70 and 30 percent, respectively.
Hagan said one way to do that is more developments with a blend of houses and businesses, "so people have the opportunity to work closer to home." One example, he said is the proposed mixed-use development--New Post in the eastern end of the county.
Some progress
William F. Mezger, senior economist for the Virginia Employment Commission in Richmond, said the region is getting more jobs closer to home.
"The Fredericksburg area is attractive to firms wanting to locate in Northern Virginia but don't have to be in D.C. or inside the Beltway," he said.
GEICO, for example, has a regional headquarters employing several thousand workers in Stafford. Mezger said the Fredericksburg area also benefits from government-related jobs at Quantico Marine base and the Navy base at Dahlgren.
Goss said he plans to take a smaller version of Reality Check on the road locally to work groups in each of the county's election districts.
"We'll say, 'OK, you've got so many owner-occupied houses, rentals--now show me where you're going to put all these people and how you are going to accommodate the additional growth.'"
Stafford and Spotsylvania counties continue to be the growth engines of the area. According to figures released by the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center last week, they ranked second and third in Virginia in population growth between 2000 and 2004.
Stafford's population grew 24.3 percent between 2000 and 2004; Spotsylvania was not far behind, up 23.9 percent. The two jurisdictions together took in 44,100 new residents over the period. And there's no sign of that abating any time soon.
Both Spotsylvania and Stafford are updating their comprehensive plans, which identify areas where development is anticipated. And both localities have begun incorporating low-impact development and smart growth concepts when builders approach them with plans.
Stafford Supervisor Kandy Hilliard said the county is facing unprecedented pressure and that choices made now will resonate into the future, for better or for worse.
"One of the things I said when I first got on the board was that if we don't know what it is we want, we will continue to react" rather than act. "We need to get out front of this."
The county, she said, must tackle hard questions such as, "What are the influences [of growth] on quality of life? Are we thinking about how to ensure interconnectedness--that there's more than one way to get around, with sidewalks, a bus system, etc."
She added, "And we have to be very aware that if we do not set aside green space, there won't be any. There will literally be a house built everywhere zoning will allow if we're not clear about how we want long-term growth to occur."
Hilliard has been an ardent advocate of preserving the Crow's Nest peninsula, a 4,000-acre swath of woodland between Potomac and Accokeek creeks.
On the cusp
Planning is an ongoing process, arguably an inexact science, in every area locality. Stafford and Spotsylvania, planners say, are facing the same kinds of issues that Prince William, Fairfax and Arlington counties faced a decade or more ago.
Now, King George, Caroline, Orange, Culpeper and Fauquier are bracing for the kind of growth that spread through Stafford and Spotsylvania during the 1990s.
Regardless of the size of the locality, there were some common themes that came to light at last week's conference in how growth should be managed.
Participants generally agreed that growth should be focused near transit stations, with a balance of housing and jobs.
Edward T. McMahon, senior resident fellow with ULI and author of "Better Models for Development in Virginia," said planners should go back to the future for guidance.
"First, in many ways, we have cultural amnesia about what's good planning. We have a model for good planing all over Virginia. It's called small towns."
"After World War II we forgot that and came up with a new model: sprawl."
Small towns, McMahon says, are not just charming anachronisms. "We need to look a that model and think about how to do it again," he said.
Call it neo-traditionalism or new urbanism, "There are so many things people loved about small towns and we can do it again."
The concept makes sense, he says, because there's always an identifiable center and edge. Traditional towns tended to have a mix of housing types, people could to shop, or to the park, and McMahon says, "It had a sense of community and a sense of place."
Arlington County, he says, has done a good job implementing the concept by creating compact, mixed-use communities around metro stations. That the county has the region's lowest office vacancy rate is no surprise, he says, because the arrangement is a good investment for companies.
"In typical suburbia there's one way to get around: driving your car. In Arlington there's four ways: car, metro, walk or ride a bike."
Arlington didn't look all that different from the Fredericksburg area 25 years ago, he said. Mixed-use developments, such as Lee's Parke, which has a large commercial component and town-like structure, are becoming a model for large developments here.
Hagerstown, Md., and Tacoma, Wash., made improvements by encouraging universities to move into dying downtowns.
There are lots of models that work, McMahon said.
"Good planning is about giving people more choice. Bad planning is about only one kind of choice."
To reach RUSTY DENNEN: 540/374-5431 rdennen@freelancestar.com