For Shopping Center Owner, Silo Goes Against the Grain

1890s Tower Blocks Stores, Will Be Razed, Firm Says

The old silo near Route 7 and Countryside Boulevard used to look over rolling fields of grain. When the farm was developed into a shopping center more than two decades ago, planners spared the silo, leaving it to stand tall above a swath of parking lots and a sheaf of businesses.

Now, the owner of Countryside Marketplace plans to knock down the agricultural structure to improve access to the shops behind it. Some residents and public officials in Loudoun County say they are hoping the company will reconsider.

"It really is a landmark of the community," said Rob Heckman, a resident of the nearby CountrySide community. "There's definitely some concern."

The brown brick silo was once part of Pigeon Hill Farm, which was bought by a former slave shortly after the Civil War and kept in his family until the mid-1960s, said Jim DeFrancia, who developed the shopping center in the 1980s and decided to keep the silo. The area was once home to a vibrant community of black farmers, he said, and the silo dates to at least the 1890s, or so he was told by one of the granddaughters of the original owner.

Now, the silo juts into a parking lot, surrounded by restaurants and small businesses. Attached to the silo is a small wooden building, its arched dormers mimicking the farm-style architecture that once was there. The building, which is also slated to be torn down, originally housed a sales center for CountrySide, the suburban community that was developed to the north in the 1970s and 1980s. Stairs were installed in the silo, spiraling up toward a platform with a view of the Potomac River through a clear dome on top.

The attached building later housed a succession of restaurants. The current tenant, Los Toltecos, a Mexican restaurant that has been on the site seven years, will move to a location in the shopping center next month, Los Toltecos owner Angel Diaz said.

Inside the cheerful restaurant, little Corona banners flap in the draft of the opening door. A soccer game between Mexico and Honduras is being shown on a flat-screen television on the wall. A door that leads into the silo is locked. Diaz said the silo is empty. He said he doesn't mind having to move, because the building is old and he will appreciate the new facilities.

The condition of the restaurant building is part of the reason that Saul Centers, the shopping center's owner, is planning to tear the structure down, said John Collich, a company senior vice president. He said that the building is "functionally obsolete" and out of code and that the restaurant would benefit from the move.

But the biggest problem, Collich said, is that the silo and restaurant building block storefronts. One shop is almost totally hidden from the road, Collich said, and the businesses have a hard time attracting customers. Saul Centers plans to extend an access road after the two structures are razed and has applied for county permits, he said.

"For tenants to locate back there and invest all of that time and energy and fail, it's not a good thing," Collich said.

Lisa Girdy, the owner of Encore! Studio of Dance, which has occupied the hidden space for almost a year and a half, said the restaurant building is a problem.

"It affects my business," she said. But the silo is not as big an obstruction, and it might be nice to leave the farm structure in place as a "mini-monument," she said.

An opposition movement to Saul Centers' plans has begun. The silo does not have landmark status, and county officials said the owner has the right to tear it down. But county Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) is circulating a petition in what she calls "a friendly attempt to ask them to change their mind."

It's an effort that DeFrancia, the shopping center's original developer, supports.

"I would hate to see the silo go away," he said. "It's a little piece of Loudoun history, but it would be a shame, like the song says, to tear down paradise to put up a parking lot."