For Now, Loudoun Curbs Dulles Growth

In a single, dramatic day in January 2004, a freshly minted Republican majority on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors reversed eight years of slow-growth policy.

Supervisors opened a vast territory west of Dulles International Airport to water and sewers, and they ordered an about-face on the county's support for a series of slow-growth legislative initiatives in Richmond.

It was the latest yaw on a punishing voyage toward suburbanization in Loudoun, a semirural county between the airport and the Blue Ridge buffeted by successive boards' pro- and slow-growth policies over the past 20 years. Now, supervisors have turned again: On Wednesday, they rejected a proposal to allow as many as 33,800 houses in southeastern Loudoun.

This is not the pro-growth government you thought it was.

Usually an election precedes the next lurch in governance. But the board has struggled to balance escalating budgets fueled by rapid population growth. It has endured hours of anti-growth testimony from residents. It has witnessed election losses by Republicans in Loudoun to an electorate fed up with high taxes and traffic. Supervisors are more mindful than ever, many say, that if they do not respond to that anger, their job security in next year's board election is not at all assured.

"Is this board slow-growth now? That's the $20 million question," said board Chairman Scott K. York (I), generally a moderate on growth. "One thing I can say: This board of nine people can be judged, as a unit, schizophrenic."

Wednesday's decisive vote provided a new chapter in Loudoun's struggle with the convulsive expansion that has placed it among the fastest-growing counties in the nation. But it also illustrates that nothing stays the same for long in this bedroom community of 260,000. Not the landscape, not the elected leaders, not even, apparently, their views.

"Two years ago, there were six people who supported this proposal," said Supervisor Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles). "Why would we have put it forward if there wasn't support for it?"

Snow has been the board's leading proponent of a plan to open up the Dulles South area west of the airport to thousands of new houses. He has argued that giving developers permission to build would be a worthwhile bargain in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars of such badly needed infrastructure as highways, parks, libraries and schools. One developer, Vienna-based Greenvest, was even prepared to donate 123 acres for a new Loudoun campus for George Mason University.

"This was my fault," Snow told board members Wednesday, when it became clear that the Dulles South proposal would fail. "I thought that this board wanted the build-out and the infrastructure."

Several factors influenced the shift in direction. First, Supervisor Lori Waters (R-Broad Run), one of the Republicans who took office in 2004, came to believe that the fast pace of development in Loudoun was incompatible with her goal of keeping county taxes low.

"I support some development," Waters said. "But it's a balance. I'm concerned about the people who live here now. In some cases, development can bring them benefits; and in other cases, it's too much of a burden."