Slow Growth Wins

The pendulum has swung away from development, for now.

IT WAS A BAD week for Washington area developers.

On Tuesday, growth skeptics swept the Montgomery County Council and executive races. The next day, County Executive-elect Isiah "Ike" Leggett said he wants to ease construction in communities that do not have the roads, schools and other infrastructure necessary to accommodate added growth. He said he will ask the council to reconsider a county moratorium lifted in 2003 that banned building in certain areas, which was not a theme of his campaign.

On Wednesday the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors rejected developers' plans to open a large tract west of Dulles International Airport to homebuilding. Among the casualties was George Mason University's proposal to build a campus on 123 acres to be donated by Greenvest, a local developer. The deal was contingent upon the developer getting its land rezoned to allow for thousands of homes near the site. The anti-development trend in Loudoun has become so pronounced that compromise proposals that would allow more limited development -- enough to entice Greenvest to stick to donating the land to George Mason -- also look to be non-starters with the Board of Supervisors.

Both of these developments signal a marked change from the pro-growth tilt of area leaders earlier in the decade. But the shift in growth policies will be most consequential in Loudoun. The once sparsely populated and predominantly rural county is rapidly approaching suburb status after 10 years of rapid homebuilding. Thousands of houses are in the pipeline west of Dulles even without any new rezoning. The Board of Supervisors is right to be cautious, especially after a Virginia Department of Transportation study released in the summer indicated that the rezoning proposal the supervisors just rejected would have overtaxed the county's already strained roads.

Still, Loudoun's supervisors should take a moderate approach to growth. Bringing a full-service George Mason campus to the county would benefit old and new residents alike, stimulate the economy and provide a handy magnet for density that county planners could exploit when improving the road and rail network. If proposals that would secure land from Greenvest won't fly, the Board of Supervisors should work with the university to find a different tract.