A New Guy On an Old Block
Recently Elected Quantico Council Member Faces Uphill Struggle for Revitalization

By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2008

The offer was written in pink letters on a small, lonely blackboard, set on the front lawn of a shotgun-style house like a poster for a bake sale or lemonade stand.

"FREE MEAT" the sign read. "Thurs 10-11 a.m. Here!"

Walking by, Town Council member Kevin Brown looked it over and gave a bemused smile. "That's Quantico for you," he said, by which he meant nothing bad -- just friendly, generous and maybe a little odd, at least alongside the rest of the Northern Virginia suburbs. The meat-sharing neighbor was a food bank volunteer for her church, he explained, adding, "It's not like an official thing."

Like anything that exists in relative isolation, the town of Quantico has developed some rather unusual characteristics over the years as a result of its geographic circumstances. A civilian island in a camouflage sea, the town, 30 miles south of Washington, faces the Potomac River on one side and is surrounded everywhere else by its more famous and much larger neighbor, the U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico. The town's 550 residents inhabit an area roughly the size of six city blocks, and the only public access road requires drivers to pass through a security checkpoint guarded by rifle-toting Marines.

Quantico has no church, no grocery store and no elementary school, but buzz-cut barbershops proliferate along its Eisenhower-era main street, Potomac Avenue. Alas, so do empty storefronts.

Brown was elected to the council, and in little time he has found himself at the center of a new controversy about an old theme: change.

"This town could be so much nicer," Brown said. "But a lot of people think there's nothing wrong with it."

With Quantico's famous name and the new $90 million National Museum of the Marine Corps up the road in nearby Triangle, Brown and others can imagine their town as a kind of Marine Corps village that would lure tourists to its downtown and entice young officers and their families to settle along its residential streets. But where Brown sees ugly, unkempt properties and peeling paint, others see a refreshing lack of pretension.

"Quantico is not a cookie-cutter suburb with yuppies living in it," said council member and former mayor Albert R. Gasser Jr., 68, owner of the Command Post Pub, Quantico's best-known watering hole. "I'm happy Quantico is diverse in population and in properties. We're a small town, and we take care of each other," he said.

Depressed housing values have drawn many lower-income renters to the town, but a kind of neighborly tranquility reigns on Quantico's streets, insulated from the commercial and residential bustle of the rest of Prince William County. Trains rumble along the edge of town from time to time, enhancing the nostalgia.

Despite its size, or perhaps because of it, Quantico residents practice an intense, if occasionally raucous, brand of local politics. Personal rivalries and feuds that stretch back decades can flare up during council meetings, and they helped drive turnout in the town's May elections to more than 40 percent, a level of participation twice that of other towns in the area. Given that there are only about 30 owner-occupied households in all of Quantico -- the rest are renters, town officials said -- this was no small feat.

It was into this maelstrom that Brown inserted himself this spring, going door to door with his campaign slogan, "Brown for Q Town," and a platform that promised better fiscal management, greater civility at council proceedings and tougher oversight of the town's police force. Brown got 76 votes, more than Florence "FoFo" Petkoson, William J. Unrine and any of the other council candidates. It seemed like a mandate.

A former Marine Corps captain and information technology consultant, Brown is tall and exceedingly polite, a devout Christian and a father of six. At 35, he is also a quarter-century younger than anyone else on the council.

Given his background, it was something of a surprise when Brown appeared to unleash the furies this month, less than two hours into his political career, at his first council meeting. A prospective home buyer who had come to Quantico to see a house Brown was selling had withdrawn his interest without explanation; Brown later asked the man for his candid impressions of the town.

Quantico, the man wrote, looked "old and tired." Its houses needed "TLC and paint," he added, and its streets lacked "the spit and polish" one would expect from a place whose identity is so closely linked to the Marine Corps.

Brown read the man's e-mail aloud to the crowded room, then looked up. "I think this is part of our problem as a town," he said. "We have a lot of things we need to work on. And it's going to require change."

At that point, Mayor Iris Tharp said she was "insulted" by the e-mail. Others bristled and scowled.

Brown has other ideas for Quantico that seem headed for conflict, too. He wants to start a blog to improve Quantico's presence online and provide transcripts or audio recordings of council proceedings. He would also like to toughen code enforcement and crack down on derelict landlords, hoping to boost Quantico's property values. Then there is the always-touchy issue of the police department, which consumes more than half of Quantico's $286,000 annual budget with 10 officers (three full-time) and two patrol cars.

Although Gasser and others welcome the "youthful exuberance" Brown brings to the town, he cautioned the newcomer to remain flexible in dealing with the town's quirks. "He seems like a black-and-white person," Gasser said. "We're more of a gray town. We try to handle every problem as best we can."

In a place where the town's five part-time council seats and mayoral job are often filled through a kind of musical-chairs system among a small pool of longtime residents, Brown's fresh face is an especially welcome sight to fellow council member Russell "Rusty" Kuhns, 64, who called this month's contentious town meeting "the best in 10 years."

"We need to encourage young people with families to move here," said Kuhns (pronounced koons), who is working to re-designate a swampy area along the edge of town in hopes of conquering new territory for Quantico that could accommodate another residential street.

Kuhns also cheered Brown's idea to chronicle Quantico's public affairs on a blog, explaining that his mother, Betty Sears, who lives across the street from him, used to post town news and factoids, not all of them flattering, in a shop window along Potomac Avenue. She once reported that there were 80 convicted felons living in town, for instance, to the dismay of many.

But as Tharp sees it, the last thing Quantico needs is more detractors. She views the town as a "little community that's gone to sleep for a while" but is "trying to revitalize."

"I love Quantico," said Tharp, 62, who was born in a hospital on the Marine Corps base, grew up in town and raised her children there. "Negative remarks about what somebody from the outside has to say about us is heartbreaking to me," she said, adding that she also disapproves of Brown's loose usage of the term "Q Town," which, in her view, "reduces us to a mere letter."

And what does she think of Brown so far?

"He's a very young person," she said. "I have no problem with young people moving in," she added. "But when people come to town to purchase property, they need to come to a town meeting to find out what we're about."

Like Gasser, Tharp and others in town are wary of proposals to redevelop Quantico's eclectic streets or enforce property restrictions in the overzealous style of a suburban homeowner's association. They don't want to see the town homogenized or its layers of character stripped away by those who haven't forged a long-term relationship with the town.

Brown, who moved to Quantico in 2004, said he understands. And lest there be any doubt he is not simply passing through, he has erected a large, two-story, colonial-style modular home for his family right in the middle of town. It's the newest, nicest home in Quantico, but it looks out on a double-wide trailer and a crumbling barracks-style apartment building that appears to have suffered an artillery attack, with a droopy awning out front and wild strands of loose wiring decorating its exterior.

Getting such properties cleaned up is the first step in renewing the town, Brown said, and although some are suspicious of his intentions, he does appear to have the support of Quantico's most elder statesman.

"I'm getting older, so it's good to have some new generations coming in to take over," said council member and former mayor Mitchel Raftelis, 85, who is also project manager for a $1.1 million streetscape rehabilitation project that aims to make Potomac Avenue more eye-pleasing and visitor-friendly.

"We want to welcome people," he said. "A lot of people don't know we have a town here."