Loudoun Reopens Door to Growth

"These rules would allow someone to submit something in crayon regardless of its impact on the environment, traffic or anything else," said Robert W. Lazaro, a spokesman for the slow-growth Piedmont Environmental Council. "In Loudoun, at least for some of the members of the Planning Commission, it's not a democracy. It's what the developers want."

In their recommendation, commissioners stuck with restrictive new lot sizes, ranging on average from 7.5 to 40 acres. But they proposed allowing property owners to qualify for the old rules so long as their applications are filed with and accepted by the county before the new rules take effect.

Without that change, only applications with approved subdivision plans -- a much smaller group -- would have been protected by the older rules.

Commissioners also voted to allow developers to dig wells for projects much later in the process, cutting down the time it takes to put together an application by as much as eight weeks. The change would allow landowners to qualify for the old zoning rules with even less lead time.

That will anger western property owners seeking to preserve their pastoral surroundings. But it won't be enough for others, who want to preserve forever the right to develop their land under current zoning.

"If we have to go to court again, we will," said Joseph L. Bane Sr., 65, a property owner and farmer from Hillsboro, in northwestern Loudoun. "They should not be taking away [three-acre] zoning. That's the best opportunity for all the landowners in western Loudoun."

The Planning Commission's handing off of the proposal to the supervisors yesterday was a much-heralded event, the work of a three-month sprint to replace the earlier set of rules struck down by the high court last March.

Developers have been racing, too -- to start the regulatory process to build hundreds of new homes before the new rules become law.

Now, another land rush is possible as property owners who didn't think they had time to push their applications through will realize that they do.