Backlash to Rapid Growth Extends To New Services and Infrastructure

In Ashburn, a group is campaigning against a proposal to build an HCA Broadlands hospital because of traffic and noise concerns. Farther west, a small group of residents is challenging the proposed location for a sheriff's office substation in Round Hill, saying there are better sites elsewhere in town.

In each case, critics say the projects are wrong for reasons that have little to do with growth. Tax-wary residents have accused the county of paying too much for land for schools and the sheriff's substation. The opposition to the HCA hospital is in part driven by rival Inova Health System, which is seeking to build a medical center nearby and has donated money to the group lobbying against HCA's request.

Part of the problem might be that the county is trying to build the infrastructure after people have moved in, setting up inevitable fights about what goes up in their back yards. Another problem, Burton said, might be the county's reliance on "cookie-cutter designs" to save money. The sprawling design for a sheriff's substation in suburban South Riding, for example, might not be appropriate for Round Hill, population 500.

Gem Bingol, a Loudoun field representative for the slow-growth Piedmont Environmental Council, said the county lacks a clear and logical process for buying land that keeps residents in the loop. She said residents are traumatized after years of waking up in the morning and finding green space suddenly paved over and buildings rising out of what just months ago were open fields.

"Too much change too fast, that's what we've had," she said. "If it was a slower pace of growth, then the community can handle it. But it is shocking when you go down the road, and you drive down six months later and there's a building there. It's like, what just happened?"

Stephen J. Snow, a former Republican supervisor who represented the populous Dulles district, said too many residents want to preserve the "fantasy" that Loudoun is still a sleepy, far-flung, rural community. He blames environmental groups such as the Piedmont Environmental Council and the majority on the Board of Supervisors for perpetuating that notion.

"Tell me what business wants to come here if you have no roads, you have no fire stations, you have no fine restaurants," said Snow, who supported Loudoun's population boom during his term. "It's silly. It's juvenile. It shows a gross lack of understanding of how building a community works."