Fairfax To Revisit Renovation Restrictions

The changes drew about 20 speakers to a Planning Commission hearing last month, including the Stegners, many of them in legal limbo. Others predict that the county is reopening the door to the kind of land use that put the issue before the Supreme Court in the first place: a case asking whether a McLean homeowner and his neighbors were within their rights to block a variance that let a homeowner build a large new house on the street.

"It's fair to say there's a lot of concern about teardowns and the impact of McMansions," Hart said.

The 2004 ruling said zoning appeals boards can grant variances only in cases of "unnecessary hardship" where the homeowner would otherwise lose all beneficial use of his property. Since then, Fairfax has issued four variances to allow houses to be torn down, including one to a couple whose fixer-upper in the Alexandria area sat seven inches below the height required for houses in a flood plain.

Few would dispute that that house deserved a variance. But the challenge for the county will be deciding who should be allowed to tear down and who should not.

"You should first have to show that relief is warranted," said Dale Murad, a leader of the McLean Citizens Association. "These permits can't be something that you just apply for and get automatically."

Wally Sansone, a McLean homeowner, said many Fairfax neighborhood associations are worried that the county will start to interpret the court's definition of hardship too broadly. "It can't be just an aesthetic hardship," he said. "The biggest concern is that you're creating a Wild West situation here."

The Stegners of Annandale said the opposite would be true in their case: A variance would allow them to build what they describe as a pleasantly proportioned house instead of a funny-looking, awkward one resembling a townhouse in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

Tracey Stegner said of the delay: "It's not saving our neighbors from having a terrible house next door."