From Lost Trees, Foes of Growth Take Root

FairGrowth first mobilized last year around opposition to MetroWest, a mini-city of 2,200 condominiums, townhouses, offices and stores planned at the Vienna Metro station. When hundreds of people -- including an angry Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) -- filled the Oakton High School auditorium for a community meeting in the spring, organizers realized they had touched a nerve. They recognized shared concerns with other communities looking at dense growth planned around Tysons Corner, the Reston and Mount Vernon areas, and the Washington & Old Dominion trail.

In planners' argot, much of what the activists are fighting is "in-fill" -- homes squeezed onto ever smaller lots. Even denser urban development and redevelopment are planned for Metro stations in Takoma Park, Silver Spring and Rockville. Planners and elected leaders say this is the only way to get people out of their cars and control sprawl.

"Wouldn't it be nice to live in an environment where we don't have to get into our car to go some place?" said Rick Bochner, a retired transit executive who lives near the Vienna Metro station and favors the near-transit development. "This is the environment MetroWest is creating."

But FairGrowth complains that such planned projects are too dense for a suburb stuck in gridlock, with crowded schools, polluted streams and precious little open space.

Led by an environmental lawyer, a retired economist, an international aid consultant and a handful of other Type A professionals, the group is well versed in land-use lingo. Many have made themselves experts in the arcana of resource protection areas, stream declassification and area plan reviews.

"Every zoning case is becoming more difficult," said Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully), whose western Fairfax district once was thought of as undeveloped.

Now he's smack in the middle of a battle over a proposal to build 10 townhouses.

Frey said it was a lot easier getting a major townhouse community called Center Ridge through the planning process 10 years ago. "You didn't have people living next door," he said. "Now people are saying they want this tree and that tree saved. They're literally walking properties."

Neighborhood pressure pushed the case of the lost trees on the goat farm to the top of the county board's agenda in the spring. The supervisors ordered the developer to stop work until it came up with a plan to replace the trees. The board will take it up Monday.

Compared with years past, there is relatively little development occurring in Fairfax, where open farmland disappeared long ago. The docket of land-use cases is thinning fast. Last year, 3,000 homes were built.

What's changing is the county's planning blueprint for how land is to be used. The land-use map is being reworked to reflect denser growth along an anticipated rail line along the Dulles Toll Road.

And now, a proposal that would allow 1,800 homes on 309 acres where Hunter Mill Road meets the Toll Road has alarmed neighbors.