Town Aims to Shield Fireman's Field From Development

About two dozen members of the Ashburn Farm Barracudas swim team took leave from the pool on a recent afternoon to do laps around the Purcellville Skating Rink. Kids in roller skates with bright orange wheels zoomed around the old building, occasionally collapsing onto the buffed wooden floor, then grinning as if it were made of cotton candy.

On Tuesday night, the Purcellville Town Council vowed to keep the property on which the rink sits open to the community and all of its giggling, tumbling children.

Council members voted to buy the rink and Fireman's Field, the sports park that surrounds it, for $1.7 million. Although the land is zoned for townhouses, officials say they will seek to put it into a conservation easement, protecting it from development.

"Wherever I go and talk about it, I get a lot of smiles and positive comments about it because Fireman's Field means a lot, not just to Purcellville but all of western Loudoun," said Robert W. Lazaro Jr., Purcellville's mayor.

For 50 years, Fireman's Field has belonged to the Purcellville Volunteer Fire Company, which has maintained the sports fields, the baseball stadium and the rink, which was built in 1904 as a religious meeting hall for the town.

It has been a central place for family activities for years. On Friday nights, the rink is transformed into "The Vibe," attracting hundreds of teens, who come to dance, play Foosball or just hang out. Dozens of youth football and baseball games are played on the fields, including the Babe Ruth World Series for 13-year-olds, which is planned for next month.

The fire department decided to sell the 12.5-acre property because it could no longer afford its upkeep, said Mark Fontaine, vice president of the fire company. Company members received small salaries to maintain the grounds and the rink, and the building needed constant work. One year, Fontaine said, the department had to pay $240,000 for a new roof.

As the maintenance costs have risen, so, too, have the demands on the fire company. Purcellville's population has exploded in the past decade with the housing developments that have cropped up, but the all-volunteer department hasn't been able to keep pace, Fontaine said.

"We don't have the manpower anymore to be able to take care of it the way it needs to be taken care of," he said. "Because of the growth in our area, the fires and the amount of calls have gone up dramatically, and we really need to focus on that."

Because the zoning allows for the construction of townhouses, the land is worth nearly double what the town agreed to pay for it, town officials said. Fontaine said the department would use the money from the sale to buy needed equipment. But he said firefighters weren't interested in selling the property to a developer, even though the company would have made a greater profit.

"We would never let that happen," he said. "It's too valuable to the community to knock it all down and put up townhouses."

Carol A. Kost, president of Loudoun Youth Inc., a nonprofit group that supports youth activities, sat reading the newspaper on the periphery of the rink as children whipped by one recent afternoon. She praised the Purcellville Town Council for buying the rink and Fireman's Field.

"I think selling it to the town was a good choice," she said. "I'd hate for a place like this to close down. It's an institution."