By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008

Parents from a Roman Catholic school in Falls Church are trying to derail a proposal to build a six-story hotel across the street, saying it would become a magnet for crime and sexual predators.

Their concerns are complicating the approval process for what many local officials consider to be a desirable commercial development in the small suburb tucked between Arlington and Fairfax counties, which has aggressively sought to attract new sources of tax revenue in recent years.

After two months of contention, the city's Planning Commission will vote today whether to recommend the project. The City Council is scheduled to vote on it later this month.

Debates about development in a city of 2.2 square miles, with a population of 11,000, are likely to influence tomorrow's council election. The seven candidates sharply disagree on the pace and type of development the city should pursue. Several maintain that growth has brought too much new housing, which can strain services. But developers have been reluctant to build projects that are only commercial, and the current council has approved several mixed-use projects. Voters also will consider a referendum that would cap the portion of residential development the city can approve in commercial districts.

Families from the century-old St. James Catholic School are caught in the cross hairs of the city's transformation. Many say they would welcome the development if it were built elsewhere. But they say hotels make poor neighbors for elementary schools.

"Hotels are meant for adults," said Patricia Paoletta, whose three children attend St. James. Even nice hotels, she said, can be havens for crime.

The proposed 110-room Hilton Garden Inn, along with a three-story office building and a parking garage, would replace a parking lot on the 700 block of West Broad Street. St. James students often traverse the block after school.

Once dotted with vacant lots and aging strip malls, Broad Street is beginning to look more like a major commercial corridor, with several new multi-story developments and "For Lease" signs. After decades of false starts, the city has recently attracted a host of developers. Since 2003, the city has approved seven mixed-use developments, including condos and retail and office space, that officials estimate will bring an additional $5.4 million a year in revenue.

In March, the council gave initial approval to begin the review process for the hotel proposal by McLean-based Jefferson Park. The land is zoned for commercial development, but the developer is seeking an exception for height and the garage.

Safety concerns from St. James parents surprised and even befuddled some city officials and the developer.

At a town hall meeting in the St. James gymnasium in early April, more than 200 parents filled rows of folding chairs beneath basketball hoops and a crucifix. Many lined up to ask such questions as whether hotel rooms would offer pornographic videos or serve alcohol.

Sex offenders are prohibited in many states, including Virginia, from moving into homes near elementary schools, but no regulations bar them from renting a room at a hotel, some parents said. They said they worried about the transience of hotel customers and the opportunities that it could create for ill-intentioned patrons to contact children.

Casey Catterton, whose children are in kindergarten and third grade at St. James, said he was concerned the hotel could be "a safe house" for pedophiles and a magnet for crime in general. He cited the Virginia crime report for 2006, which showed that 141 aggravated assaults and 215 robberies were reported in hotels statewide, and 819 assaults and 1,158 robberies were reported in parking garages or parking lots.

"Hotels and parking lots . . . bring crime to the area. It's a fact of urbanizing and density," he said at the meeting. "That's exactly what this city is heading towards."

Mayor Robin S. Gardner, who is running for reelection, attended the meeting and told parents that she would seek to address their issues. "Be it a hotel, an office, we want to make sure parents will feel comfortable with it," she said.

Robert A. Young, who is leading the project for Jefferson Park, said his research of crime statistics indicates that any tie between pedophilia and hotels is unproved. He argued that safety in the area would be enhanced by the addition of a hotel because it would add more life to a sometimes empty street. He plans to add lighting and slow traffic near the school to make it safer for students to cross.

"I would not build a project if I thought it had any chance of [compromising] the safety of the children," he said.

Drew Oosterbaan, father of an eighth-grader at St. James, said he is a prosecutor who has handled cases of sex crimes against children. He said that such crimes are "vastly underreported" and that the city should take seriously the potential risk of having a hotel near a school.

Oosterbaan said he supports the concept of building a hotel. "But I'm willing to pay whatever it costs for that hotel to go somewhere else," he said.