Plan Would Affect Proposed GMU Campus
By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 6, 2006
Supporters are trying to revive at least a small piece of a controversial proposal to allow thousands of homes in a mostly rural area of southeastern Loudoun County to protect plans for a new campus for George Mason University, officials said yesterday.
Supervisors are expected to meet for a final work session tonight and vote on the proposal Wednesday. Tonight, they will hear what George Mason needs to move forward with its plans for a campus near Route 50 in southeastern Loudoun.
GMU's expansion calls for a 123-acre Loudoun campus west of Dulles International Airport that would serve the growing population of Northern Virginia's outer suburbs. The plan depends largely on the proposal to open an area known as Dulles South, an undeveloped, 9,200-acre area west of the airport and along Route 50, to high-density residential development. GMU officials said their vision will not work without the roads, shops and housing proposed for the area by Vienna-based developer Greenvest LLC.
Although they haven't voted on the proposal, a majority of Loudoun supervisors have said it is too big and would overwhelm the county's services. Now, supervisors, a GMU official and several advocates say a vastly scaled-down version of Dulles South would save GMU's plans. The slimmed-down development would have 4,000 new homes instead of 34,000.
Even with the smaller development, Greenvest still would be willing to build the roads that GMU officials say they need, said Brian Roherty, an advocate for Dulles South development and founder of the Right Growth Policy Institute. That volume of housing also would support the retail development that university officials would like near the campus, and it would provide a place for students and faculty to live, Roherty said. Greenvest still would donate the 123-acre tract on which GMU hopes to build.
"It's not two cities the size of Fredericksburg," Roherty said, referring to an oft-used description by opponents of the original Dulles South proposal. "It's 4,000 homes, plus a GMU campus."
Plans to allow dense residential development in Dulles South have met powerful opposition from residents, anti-sprawl activists and even the administration of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who ordered a study over the summer to assess the potential traffic impact of allowing 34,000 new homes.
"There aren't five votes to pass the original proposal or anything near it, and I don't know if there are five votes here," said Supervisor James G. Burton (I-Blue Ridge).
Several developers are hoping to build in Dulles South. Greenvest is one of them, and it is promoting the most far-reaching proposal: four planned communities totaling 15,000 homes, $200 million in road improvements, a regional park, the GMU campus, schools and numerous other amenities.
The scaled-down plan would still allow much higher density development than what is allowed under current zoning rules. But it would do so in one small portion of the original 9,000-acre tract.
Some supervisors say they are not sure that the cost of such dense development -- in demand for schools, public safety and road capacity -- would be worth the benefit of a GMU campus.
GMU officials have made clear since a supervisors meeting last week that they will not proceed without some commitment to develop the area around the proposed campus. "We just couldn't," GMU chief of staff Thomas J. Hennessey said yesterday. That's where the compromise that supervisors are expected to consider tonight would come in.
"This whole project has stunk from the start and still stinks as bad as when they put it on the table," board Chairman Scott K. York (I) said. "It's an unfortunate situation, and I can only hope that the end of the road is this week."
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