Author: Dan Carney to Cathy Hudgins
I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with your efforts to promote unwanted dense development into my neighborhood in the form of the proposed Edgemoor Southgate development at the current Reston South park and ride lot.
The scale of the development and its density is not in keeping with the neighboring communities, and spot zoning changes for the specific benefit of your pet project and Edgemoor Real Estate Services is inappropriate. I’ve heard your protestations about the “unsolicited” proposal, but I’m also aware that the county sees PPEA developments as a solution to problems that it believes need addressing.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up one morning and have Reston Parkway not be a parkway, but a boulevard,” you were quoted as saying in the Reston Connection (1/3-9/07). You were further cited as saying that more urban building would suit Reston.
In light of these comments, it is hard to accept at face value your assertions that you neither encouraged the presentation of this proposal nor plan to vote in favor of it. The close correlation between the description of the project in the proposal and your own dream of refashioning Reston Parkway make it difficult to believe that these similarities are purely coincidental.
If I, or many of the rest of us, wanted to live in an urban center, we’d have moved to one. We didn’t want to live in an urban area, so we moved here. You may dream of a boulevard, anchored on one end by the Town Center and at the other end by the enhanced southern entrance to Reston promised by Edgemoor in its proposal, but the rest of us are not interested in having such density dumped on our doorsteps.
Considering your admitted bias in favor of your dream of urban development of Reston Parkway, and your clear disregard for your constituents’ wishes, I request that you either get behind our opposition to this proposal or that you recuse yourself from the process due to a conflict of interest. Your utopian urban dream conflicts with your constituents’ real-life suburban interests.
This development proposal should be rejected for one simple reason. The citizens who already live here don’t want it. We don’t care what the county staff, the developers or individual supervisors want. We live here and we will protect our investment in our families’ homes and community.
It seems that you feel that our wishes are irrelevant. So I’ll cite some concrete reasons why the proposal is unacceptable.
As you are well aware, there is an abundance of real estate available for prices below both the average for the county and for the 20191 zip code in south Reston along Glade Avenue and Colts Neck Road.
Additionally, there is an abundance of affordable housing in the McNair Farms area of Herndon, barely a mile to the west of the proposed Southgate development.
The county purchased several apartment complexes in Reston last year to prevent them going condo. The necessity of this action was suspect at that point, because the real estate bubble had already burst, and developers were busy reverting announced condo projects to apartment units.
Further, the Board’s recent unanimous approval of 1,000 units in theDulles Discovery community includes a portion dedicated to “workforce housing.” That much-larger development should contain much more of this “workforce housing” than Southgate would contribute to the housing pool.
The starting salary for teachers in Fairfax County is $42,400. There are few professions for students fresh out of a four-year college program that offers such high starting salary, especially in the liberal arts. It is not typical to suggest that fresh college graduates much be in a position to afford to buy homes immediately. It is more normal to expect they would work a few years first.
But if they don’t, we do have to expect that it is unrealistic to think we should be concerned about providing the opportunity for single individuals to buy homes right out of school. So for the sake of discussion, suppose we have a young married couple looking to buy a house. They are each 22 years old, straight out of school. Their household income is $84,800, almost exactly the median income of $88,100 for Fairfax County, according to the county’s web site. Not a bad starting point for a couple of newlyweds with no job experience.
But, you say, the rest of us bought houses before run-up in real estate prices. If our newlyweds look at townhouses, as so many of us do when we are starting out, they will find that the average price of a townhouse in the county is $263,340, also according to the county’s web site. The housing and salary numbers date from 2004, which is the newest data on the site.
Washington National Bank says that home buyers can afford to buy a house that costs between three and five times their annual income, giving our shoppers a price range of $254,400 to $424,000.
Of course, all this capability comes on only the basic starting salary, before bonuses for earning various certifications -- potentially worth thousands in additional income – extra responsibilities such as coaching and other opportunities teachers can use to boost their salary. All for nine months of work! Teachers really feeling financial pressure can take on summer jobs, but I suppose that is only if they really want to open an income gap over the average county resident.
Most teachers, of course, make more than the starting salary, with an average pay of $60,200, according to the county’s web site.
Traffic is another significant concern for the development. The hundreds of families who would live in the proposed apartments and townhouses will, like most people who do not, in fact, live in a dense urban environment, drive to their work and return home every night. This will add more cars to the already-crowded Reston Parkway every day.
The idea that the availability of a bus will attract most of the residents to abandon their cars for commuting is unrealistic. The fact is that even with this development, the area is will not be a dense urban area with jobs, taxis and subways a short walk away. Even in cities with those features, the real factor that keeps people out of their cars is the cost of parking, which won’t be an issue for these residents, who will all have cars. And if you have a car, you will use it because it is always faster and more convenient than using mass transit and it is sometimes cheaper too.
The proposed correction to the misalignment of the Lawyer's Road intersection would probably help flow more traffic through the area. But the current misalignment is the county’s own fault. Don’t punish us with an undesirable repair to this misalignment when the county itself created the problem.
The residents who would move into these houses will be fairly similar to those in other nearby apartments and townhouses, which means that they will have children who need to attend school. The county’s inability to recognize this fact resulted in McNair Farms Elementary School being built half the needed size.
Our students at Fox Mill Elementary are paying the price for the county’s error, as some of them are now in trailers that were installed to help the school handle the overflow from the overcrowded and underperforming McNair School. Which of the several nearby schools will accept the additional children from Southgate?
Conclusion
The Southgate proposal is unwanted by neighbors and is in conflictwith the county’s own comprehensive plan. The height and scale of theproposed parking structure, apartments and townhouses is not inkeeping with the nearby neighborhoods. The dense housing will pack ina large number of people placing additional strain on the resources ofnearby roads and schools.This proposal, like the equally insulting and unpopular proposeddevelopment of Hunter Mill Road last year, will be defeated becausecitizens will absolutely not accept it. The only question thatremains to be answered is how much taxpayers money the county willwaste attempting to force this proposal through.How much citizens’ time and money will be used to prevent this fromhappening? If you make us fight it to the end, we will. It would beeasier and cheaper for everyone involved for the board to reject theproposal when it is presented. That is the only responsible course ofaction and the only action that a true representative of the citizenscould take.
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