CTroyMathis
20 May 2003, 06:12 PM
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/horizon/0503/19virginia.html
Planning for growth pays dividends
By JULIE B. HAIRSTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ARLINGTON, Va. -- If not for Washington, D.C.'s train system and the vision of community leaders in the 1970s, Arlington, Va., might be nothing more than a former suburb swallowed by sprawl.
Instead, it is the envy of its Northern Virginia neighbors, with the lowest property tax rate and highest office occupancy in the region. It has sought-after neighborhoods and an economy so sound it has lowered taxes twice in two years.
Less than 20 miles away, Loudoun County, once a sleepy farming community, is reacting to a wave of development that took it by surprise in the mid-1990s and has forced its property tax rate to nearly double in 10 years. County leaders put brakes on growth with the only control they had, the county's zoning ordinance, hoping it can withstand the 193 lawsuits now trying to undo it.
Like metro Atlanta's suburban counties, the Northern Virginia communities surrounding Washington must contend with gridlock, exploding demands for services by new residents and increasing environmental regulation.
Decisions that Atlanta's leaders make in the months ahead may determine whether the region's communities follow Arlington's model for coping with growth and traffic, or Loudoun County's.
Arlington is the smallest county in the nation, only 25.8 square miles. Located just across the Potomac River from Washington, it was a logical location for the Washington Metro system's first thrust outside city borders.
Eleven of 20 stations on the rail line are in Arlington. The first opened in 1979. By then, the county already had a bold plan to make the most of the system while protecting residential zones. Planners and county leaders in the early 1970s pushed to build the rail line underground and away from highway paths. Then, they zoned the areas closest to the stations for high-density development.
In a move unusual for the time, the zoning allowed construction of residential, commercial and retail space on the same plot of land. The high-density zoning was restricted to preserve green space and protect existing single-family and multifamily residential areas.
"Where the stations went in and development pressures were created, there was a lot of struggle with the neighborhoods as to how much development to allow," said Ron Kirby, transportation director of the Washington Council of Governments, the regional planning organization for metro Washington. "Even in Arlington, which planned a long way ahead, there was always somebody who was resisting the development coming in. The key to success there was to plan a long way ahead."
Loudoun County's failure to foresee what lay ahead as Washington-area development spread toward its borders has left it grappling with the consequences.
Loudoun's population has almost tripled since 1990, and residential building in the county is at an all-time high. Loudoun is the second-fastest-growing county in the United States, just ahead of metro Atlanta's Henry and Forsyth counties.
MCI, formerly WorldCom, and America Online built headquarters in Loudoun in the late 1990s.
MCI spokeswoman Julie Moore said proximity to Washington Dulles International Airport and the large number of workers the company already had in the region made Loudoun "a natural fit."
AOL's move to Loudoun in 1996 brought more than 3,000 workers into the county and drew other companies that also built rambling campuses along the Virginia 28 corridor.
"More and more development is occurring farther out, and people are commuting long distances," said transportation planner Kirby. "As employment goes out, then residential can go even farther out. And that's what's happening. It's just economics."
County leaders were unprepared for the public service demands of so many new residents. Two-lane county roads leading to the high-tech corridor are jammed at rush hour, schools are filling up as fast as the county can build them, and police and fire squads are stretched to the limit.
Looking ahead
In contrast, Arlington officials in the 1970s understood mass transit would bring change, and they engaged residents in deciding how to make the changes benefit the county.
After gathering public opinion, county leaders adopted Arlington's land-use plan in 1975 while Metro stops were under construction. The plan encouraged high-density, mixed-use development along the transit spine.
"Less than 7 percent of the land area of the county is committed to high-density development around the Metro stations and within a quarter to a third of a mile or so. And anything else out there, we've kept the same. That's the idea," said Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Arlington Board and a former board chairman for the Washington Metro system.
About two-thirds of the planned construction around stations is now complete, and Arlington is reaping the benefits. In the midst of a recession that has driven office vacancy rates to nearly 15 percent nationwide, office vacancy rates in Arlington are 11.5 percent.
The rest of Northern Virginia has an average office vacancy rate of about 17.5 percent.
The office vacancy rate in Atlanta hovers around 17 percent.
Atlanta is beginning to flirt with the concept of tying high-density, mixed-use development to its transit stops, notably at the Lindbergh and Midtown stations. But it is a fledgling strategy here. Instead, most of metro Atlanta is in the same position as Loudoun County.
Loudoun can't look forward to transit to ease congestion. Fifteen years ago, county leaders had little reason to believe it was needed. Once the growth began, it came too fast to shape it. The recent failure of a proposed sales tax increase will delay a train line into Loudoun indefinitely.
County Supervisor Jim Burton, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who leads the county's slow-growth effort, says more than half the people now living in Loudoun did not live there five years ago.
"Any economist worth his salt would tell you that a 2 or 3 percent growth rate per year is about as much as any community can sustain over the long haul," Burton said. "The rates that we've been growing at are not sustainable financially or socially."
County debt levels have soared. One of the biggest expenses is education. Loudoun has opened 32 schools since 1993 and plans to open 12 more in the next six years.
"We've had a 15 percent [property] tax increase this year, a 15 percent tax increase last year and a 22 percent increase two years ago. We cannot keep that up, but unfortunately it's going to," Burton said.
Stable revenue
The commercial development Arlington mapped out in 1975 provides a substantial and stable stream of tax revenue to the county, making public services more affordable. The county has the lowest property tax rate in Northern Virginia.
"It's not that nobody complains about development here like they do everywhere. But for the most part, most Arlingtonians understand the deal," Arlington Board member Zimmerman said. "That is the fiscal side of smart growth. And these folks are receiving the benefit and most of them understand that they're receiving the benefit."
The availability of transit helped Arlington hold on to a company as it evolved from a small local branch bank. After growing to more than 450 employees, the online banking division of ETrade began in 2002 to search Northern Virginia for new offices.
A corporate campus in nearby Fairfax County offered room to spread out and lots of free parking, but it could not match the accessibility of Arlington, said ETrade President Arlen Gelbard.
"What we ultimately determined was that we would have had to replace about half our work force if we went to a non-Metro-accessible suburb," Gelbard said.
Arlington's commitment to transit attracted Washington business consultant Karen Sutter and her family, who settled there after living in the city for several years.
"We wanted to live where we would be close to public transportation. We're about 1.3 miles from either Ballston or East Falls Church stations, and in snow or nice weather, we can choose to walk to the subway."
Metro ridership from Arlington stations doubled between 1991 and 2002, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which last year gave the area a smart-growth award.
"Twelve percent of the households in Arlington have no car," Zimmerman said. "A lot of them just have one car, whereas in Fairfax you've got a majority that have two or more cars. That makes a big difference in impact."
Zoning restrictions
After failing to get growth slowing measures approved by the Virginia General Assembly, exasperated Loudoun officials turned to radical zoning restrictions that eventually should cut the county's growth rate in half.
A zoning ordinance approved in January will limit high-density growth to the eastern end of the county near Dulles Airport and the Virginia 28 corridor. In most of the remaining county, only one house will be allowed per 20 acres; the government has no plans to extend utility lines there.
"We are the western edge [of Washington sprawl], and we have drawn a line in the sand," Burton said. "No doubt about it."
Already, Loudoun's new zoning ordinance is the target of nearly 200 lawsuits. County officials have included money in current and future budgets for millions in legal bills.
Other rapidly growing counties, such as metro Atlanta's Forsyth, are watching the results.
Many local observers believe Loudoun's efforts to slow down growth are a misguided attempt to stave off the inevitable.
Til Hazel, a partner in the Washington law firm Reed Smith, is involved in one lawsuit against Loudoun, and his firm represents some other Loudoun plaintiffs. He said slow-growth advocates are affluent people opposed to affordable housing.
"The myth that growth doesn't pay for itself is contrived, but the county can obscure that because of their control of the numbers," said Hazel, who has been practicing real estate law in Northern Virginia for more than 40 years.
He expects some of the suits to be settled but said he believes the aggressive reduction in lot sizes will withstand legal challenge. The new zoning won't stem Loudoun's growth right away.
During the three years the county was considering new zoning, developers requested thousands of permits for subdivisions that can still be built out when the market recovers.
"What we've done will, in the long term, change what Loudoun will look like. But in the short term, it will not," Burton said. "We will continue to grow at a rate governed by the market. We've still got a large backlog."
Hazel predicts that slower growth in Loudoun will inflate housing prices artificially and push development even farther away.
"People still want to live in a single-family house on a lot," Hazel said. "They don't want to live and raise their kids on the 12th floor of a high-rise."
But Burton said the Washington area's long-term prosperity depends on finding more responsible ways to grow.
"The region has to find another solution, and that solution has to lie in changing the land-use patterns," Burton said.
__________
I've followed a lot of smart growth measures and related websites in Arlington Co. for years. They really do have it goin' on. I also spent a couple of summers back in the mid-eighties right there in Rosslyn and Ballston. Very cool then, even profoundly moreso now.
Planning for growth pays dividends
By JULIE B. HAIRSTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ARLINGTON, Va. -- If not for Washington, D.C.'s train system and the vision of community leaders in the 1970s, Arlington, Va., might be nothing more than a former suburb swallowed by sprawl.
Instead, it is the envy of its Northern Virginia neighbors, with the lowest property tax rate and highest office occupancy in the region. It has sought-after neighborhoods and an economy so sound it has lowered taxes twice in two years.
Less than 20 miles away, Loudoun County, once a sleepy farming community, is reacting to a wave of development that took it by surprise in the mid-1990s and has forced its property tax rate to nearly double in 10 years. County leaders put brakes on growth with the only control they had, the county's zoning ordinance, hoping it can withstand the 193 lawsuits now trying to undo it.
Like metro Atlanta's suburban counties, the Northern Virginia communities surrounding Washington must contend with gridlock, exploding demands for services by new residents and increasing environmental regulation.
Decisions that Atlanta's leaders make in the months ahead may determine whether the region's communities follow Arlington's model for coping with growth and traffic, or Loudoun County's.
Arlington is the smallest county in the nation, only 25.8 square miles. Located just across the Potomac River from Washington, it was a logical location for the Washington Metro system's first thrust outside city borders.
Eleven of 20 stations on the rail line are in Arlington. The first opened in 1979. By then, the county already had a bold plan to make the most of the system while protecting residential zones. Planners and county leaders in the early 1970s pushed to build the rail line underground and away from highway paths. Then, they zoned the areas closest to the stations for high-density development.
In a move unusual for the time, the zoning allowed construction of residential, commercial and retail space on the same plot of land. The high-density zoning was restricted to preserve green space and protect existing single-family and multifamily residential areas.
"Where the stations went in and development pressures were created, there was a lot of struggle with the neighborhoods as to how much development to allow," said Ron Kirby, transportation director of the Washington Council of Governments, the regional planning organization for metro Washington. "Even in Arlington, which planned a long way ahead, there was always somebody who was resisting the development coming in. The key to success there was to plan a long way ahead."
Loudoun County's failure to foresee what lay ahead as Washington-area development spread toward its borders has left it grappling with the consequences.
Loudoun's population has almost tripled since 1990, and residential building in the county is at an all-time high. Loudoun is the second-fastest-growing county in the United States, just ahead of metro Atlanta's Henry and Forsyth counties.
MCI, formerly WorldCom, and America Online built headquarters in Loudoun in the late 1990s.
MCI spokeswoman Julie Moore said proximity to Washington Dulles International Airport and the large number of workers the company already had in the region made Loudoun "a natural fit."
AOL's move to Loudoun in 1996 brought more than 3,000 workers into the county and drew other companies that also built rambling campuses along the Virginia 28 corridor.
"More and more development is occurring farther out, and people are commuting long distances," said transportation planner Kirby. "As employment goes out, then residential can go even farther out. And that's what's happening. It's just economics."
County leaders were unprepared for the public service demands of so many new residents. Two-lane county roads leading to the high-tech corridor are jammed at rush hour, schools are filling up as fast as the county can build them, and police and fire squads are stretched to the limit.
Looking ahead
In contrast, Arlington officials in the 1970s understood mass transit would bring change, and they engaged residents in deciding how to make the changes benefit the county.
After gathering public opinion, county leaders adopted Arlington's land-use plan in 1975 while Metro stops were under construction. The plan encouraged high-density, mixed-use development along the transit spine.
"Less than 7 percent of the land area of the county is committed to high-density development around the Metro stations and within a quarter to a third of a mile or so. And anything else out there, we've kept the same. That's the idea," said Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Arlington Board and a former board chairman for the Washington Metro system.
About two-thirds of the planned construction around stations is now complete, and Arlington is reaping the benefits. In the midst of a recession that has driven office vacancy rates to nearly 15 percent nationwide, office vacancy rates in Arlington are 11.5 percent.
The rest of Northern Virginia has an average office vacancy rate of about 17.5 percent.
The office vacancy rate in Atlanta hovers around 17 percent.
Atlanta is beginning to flirt with the concept of tying high-density, mixed-use development to its transit stops, notably at the Lindbergh and Midtown stations. But it is a fledgling strategy here. Instead, most of metro Atlanta is in the same position as Loudoun County.
Loudoun can't look forward to transit to ease congestion. Fifteen years ago, county leaders had little reason to believe it was needed. Once the growth began, it came too fast to shape it. The recent failure of a proposed sales tax increase will delay a train line into Loudoun indefinitely.
County Supervisor Jim Burton, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who leads the county's slow-growth effort, says more than half the people now living in Loudoun did not live there five years ago.
"Any economist worth his salt would tell you that a 2 or 3 percent growth rate per year is about as much as any community can sustain over the long haul," Burton said. "The rates that we've been growing at are not sustainable financially or socially."
County debt levels have soared. One of the biggest expenses is education. Loudoun has opened 32 schools since 1993 and plans to open 12 more in the next six years.
"We've had a 15 percent [property] tax increase this year, a 15 percent tax increase last year and a 22 percent increase two years ago. We cannot keep that up, but unfortunately it's going to," Burton said.
Stable revenue
The commercial development Arlington mapped out in 1975 provides a substantial and stable stream of tax revenue to the county, making public services more affordable. The county has the lowest property tax rate in Northern Virginia.
"It's not that nobody complains about development here like they do everywhere. But for the most part, most Arlingtonians understand the deal," Arlington Board member Zimmerman said. "That is the fiscal side of smart growth. And these folks are receiving the benefit and most of them understand that they're receiving the benefit."
The availability of transit helped Arlington hold on to a company as it evolved from a small local branch bank. After growing to more than 450 employees, the online banking division of ETrade began in 2002 to search Northern Virginia for new offices.
A corporate campus in nearby Fairfax County offered room to spread out and lots of free parking, but it could not match the accessibility of Arlington, said ETrade President Arlen Gelbard.
"What we ultimately determined was that we would have had to replace about half our work force if we went to a non-Metro-accessible suburb," Gelbard said.
Arlington's commitment to transit attracted Washington business consultant Karen Sutter and her family, who settled there after living in the city for several years.
"We wanted to live where we would be close to public transportation. We're about 1.3 miles from either Ballston or East Falls Church stations, and in snow or nice weather, we can choose to walk to the subway."
Metro ridership from Arlington stations doubled between 1991 and 2002, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which last year gave the area a smart-growth award.
"Twelve percent of the households in Arlington have no car," Zimmerman said. "A lot of them just have one car, whereas in Fairfax you've got a majority that have two or more cars. That makes a big difference in impact."
Zoning restrictions
After failing to get growth slowing measures approved by the Virginia General Assembly, exasperated Loudoun officials turned to radical zoning restrictions that eventually should cut the county's growth rate in half.
A zoning ordinance approved in January will limit high-density growth to the eastern end of the county near Dulles Airport and the Virginia 28 corridor. In most of the remaining county, only one house will be allowed per 20 acres; the government has no plans to extend utility lines there.
"We are the western edge [of Washington sprawl], and we have drawn a line in the sand," Burton said. "No doubt about it."
Already, Loudoun's new zoning ordinance is the target of nearly 200 lawsuits. County officials have included money in current and future budgets for millions in legal bills.
Other rapidly growing counties, such as metro Atlanta's Forsyth, are watching the results.
Many local observers believe Loudoun's efforts to slow down growth are a misguided attempt to stave off the inevitable.
Til Hazel, a partner in the Washington law firm Reed Smith, is involved in one lawsuit against Loudoun, and his firm represents some other Loudoun plaintiffs. He said slow-growth advocates are affluent people opposed to affordable housing.
"The myth that growth doesn't pay for itself is contrived, but the county can obscure that because of their control of the numbers," said Hazel, who has been practicing real estate law in Northern Virginia for more than 40 years.
He expects some of the suits to be settled but said he believes the aggressive reduction in lot sizes will withstand legal challenge. The new zoning won't stem Loudoun's growth right away.
During the three years the county was considering new zoning, developers requested thousands of permits for subdivisions that can still be built out when the market recovers.
"What we've done will, in the long term, change what Loudoun will look like. But in the short term, it will not," Burton said. "We will continue to grow at a rate governed by the market. We've still got a large backlog."
Hazel predicts that slower growth in Loudoun will inflate housing prices artificially and push development even farther away.
"People still want to live in a single-family house on a lot," Hazel said. "They don't want to live and raise their kids on the 12th floor of a high-rise."
But Burton said the Washington area's long-term prosperity depends on finding more responsible ways to grow.
"The region has to find another solution, and that solution has to lie in changing the land-use patterns," Burton said.
__________
I've followed a lot of smart growth measures and related websites in Arlington Co. for years. They really do have it goin' on. I also spent a couple of summers back in the mid-eighties right there in Rosslyn and Ballston. Very cool then, even profoundly moreso now.