Vienna Plan Poised To Face Loss of Land
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 2, 2005
The developers seeking to build a cluster of mid-rises at the Vienna Metro station say they can push ahead with the controversial project even if Rep. Thomas M. Davis III carries through on an attempt to block it.
The Pulte Homes developers have been planning to erect 13 residential and office buildings on a 56-acre parcel near the station. They say most of their proposal can withstand the pledge by Davis (R-Va.) to persuade Metro to withhold a small but critical parcel of land.
Davis's intervention "dented the car and made it ugly -- but didn't total it," Stan Settle, a Pulte Homes vice president, said last week. "Some people think this thing is going to get killed. [But] we're moving forward."
The long-running MetroWest project battle, which took another turn two weeks ago when Davis announced he would try to hold it up, has become one of the region's most heated debates over what is known as "smart growth," which calls for concentrating homes and offices near transit stops.
Davis's role has lent the debate a high-profile partisan angle, with the congressman squaring off against the Democrat-controlled Fairfax Board of Supervisors, which approved the project.
The MetroWest plan, one of the largest of its kind in the region, won accolades from a coalition of business and environmental groups. And in December, after months of debate, the concept received the unanimous approval of the county board.
Advocates of "smart growth" argue that it makes sense to concentrate development near transit stops because that encourages train ridership and accommodates the demand for housing without consuming as much land as conventional suburban development.
Some residents, however, disagree. And at a community meeting April 19, Davis told a group of opponents that he would amend a Metro funding bill to block the sale or lease of the 3.2-acre parcel that the agency owns next to the station. Metro had been negotiating to sell the property to Pulte Homes in exchange for about $6 million and $9 million worth of improvements to the station.
Davis is chairman of the House committee that handles Metro funding. As a result, the Metro agency appears likely to yield to any request he might make to withhold the property.
"I don't see us picking a fight with a man who can help us down the road," said T. Dana Kauffman, chairman of the Metro board and a Fairfax supervisor.
The land in question is a small part of the 56-acre Pulte plan, but because it sits closest to the station, it is considered crucial to connecting potential workers and residents at MetroWest to the transit system.
Davis has said that by blocking the land sale, he hopes to bring the developers back to the negotiating table to alter their plan.
"This is the only leverage that we have," Davis said last week. "Hopefully, we can sit down and work something out.
"I'm not a no-growther, but I have a strong opinion on this case."
Like the neighborhood opponents, Davis says he considers the project too dense. He also says that in approving the project, the county board focused too much on developing housing -- which the county says is necessary to accommodate new workers -- and too little on mitigating the traffic impact that would be created by new residents.
"They have just missed the whole transportation aspect," Davis said. "I think that's a mistake."
Davis has dismissed the charges from some county leaders that it is improper for a member of Congress to intervene to undermine a local government decision. He similarly rejects the idea that he did so because he fears that more Democrats than Republicans will fill the new housing at MetroWest.
"We represent the same people they represent -- sometimes better I think," he said of the county board members. "That issue has no credibility. We can't get involved in who moves in. It's a free country."
His wife, state Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis (R-Fairfax), had inquired about ways to slow the project, according to Michael L. Toalson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia.
Toalson says Devolites Davis approached him in late December and said she wanted to scale back or eliminate the project -- but she wanted to know whether this could be done by the General Assembly without violating property rights.
"I said, 'Jeannemarie, for the life of me, I can't think of a way your involvement or the state legislature's involvement could be enacted that wouldn't affect one's property rights," Toalson recalls. "I never heard another word from her."
Devolites Davis has said she tried to get involved after hearing constituents' fears about development.
"I represent the Town of Vienna, and they are very concerned about the growth they are seeing at Tysons Corner and at Vienna Metro -- they're being squeezed."
The project's outcome hinges on the legal and political leverage the two sides bring to negotiations.
The leverage for the project's opponents lies with Davis and his control over the Metro-owned parcel of land. The parcel is about 150 feet wide, but because it is mostly occupied by a massive berm, it could stand as a significant barrier between the proposed development and the train station.
Settle says that although building the project without the Metro parcel would be a "travesty," the development is not dependent on it. Under his reading of county approvals, the developers simply could shift the planned buildings off the Metro parcel and onto the remainder of the property, losing less than 5 percent of its volume.
County officials are studying the legal effects of losing the Metro property, but say they haven't come to any conclusions.
"I'm not ruling anything in and I'm not ruling anything out," Fairfax Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said. "I haven't seen a proposal."
Although some neighborhood groups approve of the project, some opponents say they are glad Davis has come to the rescue.
"I don't think it necessarily means the death knell for the project," said Will Elliott, one of the neighbors who has organized the opposition. "But we're certainly pleased that someone has said: 'Hey guys -- time out. This project might not be the greatest thing since sliced bread.' "
Staff writer Lisa Rein contributed to this report.