A s the fastest-growing county in the country over the past four years, Loudoun is now synonymous with growth. So it should be no surprise that the political fault lines in the county divide those who favor hyper-growth and those who would slow it, or prevent it altogether.
But just as important as the pace of growth is its composition, which gets much less attention.
"The story of Loudoun's development is still being written," says Larry Rosenstrauch, the county's straight-shooting economic development director. "We're a bedroom community that is in the process of becoming something else."
Back in the late '90s, it looked as if Loudoun was to become the center of a burgeoning tech and telecom cluster, thanks to cheap land and the fortuitous accident that was AOL. Housing took off, speculative office buildings and data centers sprouted up everywhere, and developers scrambled to buy up the best sites on which to build the headquarters for the next MCI.
Even after the tech boom went bust, however, housing development continued at a furious pace, bringing with it -- as it always does -- shopping centers and doctors' offices and other activity demanded by local residents. But in terms of attracting enterprises that sell goods and services outside the county, growth has been slow -- the one exception being a new research campus for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The percentage of the tax base represented by nonresidential property has fallen to 15 from 21. Ideally it would be 25 to 30 percent.
The residential boom has strained the county budget. New residents demand so much in terms of schools, roads, sewers and other services that, by one calculation, houses assessed for less than $1 million are probably a net drain on county finances. With the average residence now selling for about half that, the only way to make up for that deficit is by attracting commercial development.
The office market has finally recovered from the overbuilding of the tech boom. But according to Rosenstrauch, there is a shortage of speculative office buildings that could house the small and mid-size firms that are likely to be the engines of job growth. Much of the choice land, however, remains in the hands of large developers, who prefer to wait for corporate tenants looking for large blocks of high-priced space.
"We are missing opportunities," says Rosenstrauch. In fact, Jennifer Sterling, the chairman of the county chamber of commerce, recently moved her 10-person marketing company to Reston because she couldn't find suitable space in Loudoun.
Some developers are finally beginning to talk about breaking ground on new office complexes over the next year. Much of it is likely to be clustered around Dulles and the government's new intelligence and homeland security operations along Route 28.
But in the long run, developers such as Jim Todd of the Peterson Cos. think the key to attracting new businesses to Loudoun is housing. Gone are the days, says Todd, when companies locate operations where the chief executive wants to live. With skilled workers in short supply and commuting hassles mounting, companies increasingly are locating at least a portion of their operations in places where employees already live and potential employees can find housing.
Todd sees Loudoun's future not in isolated office parks and corporate campuses but in mixed-use "town centers" where people live, work and shop in close proximity. That's precisely what Peterson and the Claude Moore Trust are planning to announce for a 150-acre site off the Dulles Greenway slated for a Metro stop in 2015.
Because of distance and traffic congestion, Loudoun County cannot rely on proximity to Washington, or even the spillover from Tysons Corner and Reston, to drive its economic development. Its challenge now is to prove to potential employers that there is a "there" there in Loudoun -- not just concentrations of people, but clusters of activity that give shape to what now appears to be undifferentiated sprawl.
Steven Pearlstein can be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.
